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COEffilGHT DEPOSm 



PRESIDKNT U ILM)N 



PRESIDENT 
WILSON 



BY 

DANIEL HALEVY 



TRANSLATED FROM TTFE FRENCH 
BY 

HUGH STOKES 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 

MCMXIX 



Copyright, iqiq, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York. U. S. A. 



m 



PREFACE 



At any other time the author would ask in^ 
(hilgence for presenting to the i)uhHc such a 
summary work upon so diflicult and vast a suh- 
ject. But, with events crowding upon each 
other so rapidly that we can scarcely follow 
them, information can only be conveyed in a 
hasty and improvised manner. 

The author has made use of two bio.^:- 
rai)hies : "Woodrow Wilson, the Man and His 
Work," bv Mr. Henry Jones Ford, and "Presi- 
dent Wilson, His Problems and His Policy," by 
?.Ir. H. Wilson Harris. He has had access to 
the fine library of the American Chamber of 
Commerce, always hospitable to workers. He 
has also been greatly helped by former col- 
lear^ues of the Bureau des Etudes de la Maison 
de la Presse, MM. Othon Guerlac, Professor of 
French Literature at Cornell University, and 
M. Michel Beer. They have assisted him \yith 
advice, and opened for his benefit archives 
which are extremely valuable in the study of 

our own period. 

D. H. 

October, 19 17. 

5 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



I. — Childhood and Youth .... 9 

II.— Essayist and Historian, 1890- 

1902 36 

III. — The Presidency of Princeton . 65 

IV.— The Government of New Jersey 84 

V. — The First Presidential Candida- 
ture Ill 

VI.— The Presidency: Reforms . . . 135 

VII. — President Wilson and War . . 154 

VIII.— Towards War: Deeds .... 182 

IX.— Towards War: Doctrines . . . 215 

X. — Re-election ..... o. 231 

XL— War . 254 



I — Childhood and Youth 



THE most active of the aristocracies 
which take the lead in the United 
States of America is formed of the 
descendants of the puritan families. 
They have created manners, culture, the State 
itself. Woodrow Wilson belongs to these 
families by double kinship. 

His grandfather, James Wilson, came orig- 
inally from Ulster. In 1807, while quite a 
young man, he disembarked at Philadelphia. 
He was a man of the people, but well informed 
like so many members of the Protestant sects. 
Setting up as a printer, he was successful in 
business. In 1808 he married a girl, also an 
Ulster Presbyterian, who had crossed the At- 
lantic with him in the previous year. Then, 
leaving Philadelphia, they settled in Ohio where 
pioneers were busily founding the early town- 
ships. James Wilson established in Ohio a 
newspaper, the Western Herald. In 1832 he 
established a second, the Pennsylvania Advo- 
cate of Pittsburg. Both were produced with 
the assistance of his sons, who were brought 
up to be working printers as well as publicists. 

9 



10 President Wilson 

This Anglo-Saxon humanity assumed its prim- 
itive aspect whilst conquering a world of vir- 
gin forests and marshy prairies, of mountains 
and of deserts. 

Be strong backed, brovrn handed, upright as your 
pines, 

By the shape of a hemisphere shape your designs. 

Thus taught an old American verse that the 
child Wilson had often heard inculcated. 
These lines he learnt to repeat. 

A man who works with his hands must ex- 
plore, discover, clear the soil, cultivate, build, 
and guard his domain. The same t}^pe of man 
belonging to the intellectual classes preaches, 
teaches, publishes, edits, and prints. This was 
the case with the Wilsons, from father to son. 
Tames Wilson died a man of consideration and 
importance in his State. He had been nomi- 
nated a magistrate, and was commonlv called 
"Judge Wilson." 

His youngest son, Joseph Ruggles \\'il5on, 
taught in the universities, becoming a pastor 
as well as a professor. His life was divided 
between these two occupations. He married 
Janet Woodrow, also of Presbyterian origin, 
her father being a Scottish pastor. In this 
household Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born 
on December 28, 1856. He grew up in a 



Childhood and Youth 11 

double atmosphere, American and European, 
in the somewhat rude freedom of the new 
world, in the already classical culture of the 
old. 

These Puritan families were by no means 
of a grave and frowning temperament. Their 
blood, springing from Scotland and Ireland, 
was Celtic. It is a very brisk strain. England 
draws many of its public entertainers from 
Ireland. The Scotch are pre-eminent for the 
flow and beauty of their speech. Gladstone 
and Carlyle were of Scottish race. The Rev- 
erend Joseph Ruggles Wilson was famous for 
intellect and eloquence, and his son Woodrow 
\\'ilson has inherited both these gifts. They 
were perhaps increased, or, better still, devel- 
oped by the manner of life in those southern 
states — \'irginia, Tennessee, South Carolina — 
where the Rev. J. R. Wilson followed his pas- 
toral and professorial career and educated his 
children. The culture was often very ad- 
vanced, the literary taste often very refined, in 
these southern lands ruled by an old and rich 
rural aristocracy. \\'oodrow \\'ilson profited 
from these traditions and fortuitous combina- 
tions. 

I cannot find in the stories of his biographers 
any characteristic which distinguishes his in- 



12 President Wilson 

fancy and adolescence from those of children 
in general. He was a young Anglo-Saxon, 
well gifted, who was formed and strengthened 
in the traditions of his race. Like many oth- 
ers he had a passion for the sea, and wished 
to become a sailor. And he had a similar en- 
thusiasm for bodily exercise, in which he ex- 
celled. He had little taste for science, but on 
the other hand a great inclination for reading, 
— historical, philosophical, and literary. Writ- 
ing became his dominating interest, and this 
increased and did not change. At the age of 
twenty-one he became a member of the edi- 
torial committee which directed a magazine 
published by his fellow students at Princeton 
University. At twenty-two he was the sole 
editor, and carried off a prize for literature 
w^ith an essay on Pitt. We would like to have 
young Wilson's judgment upon the great Eng- 
lish leader, the dictator of the wars directed 
by England against revolutionary and Napo- 
leonic imperialism. But it has not been pos- 
sible to recover this essay. 

Woodrow Wilson became a writer, and a 
political writer. This was his true vocation, 
in which he commenced his career. He was 
young, sagacious, and alert. He knew how 
to observe ; and matter for observation was not 
lacking. From his earliest days he was sur- 



Childhood and Youth 13 

rounded by material which interested him and 
educated his mind. Woodrow Wilson was de- 
veloping in the Southern States at the moment 
of the great crisis of his country in the nine- 
teenth century. The Southern States owned 
slaves. The Northern States had none. The 
Southerners wished to keep their slaves, and 
to maintain — separate from their civic and 
family life — an inferior race. The Northern- 
ers desired to limit, even to suppress, an insti- 
tution with such grave moral and social incon- 
veniences. And the conflict had other rami- 
fications. The Southerners defended at the 
same time, not simply a servile institution, but 
the right of each state forming part of the 
United States to govern itself in accordance 
W'ith its own particular laws. They withdrew 
from the North and formed a separate Un- 
ion. The men of the North, in fighting these 
seceding states, fought not only for the free- 
dom of the blacks but also for the intangible 
character of the United States, the solidarity 
and the future of this state-union, which had 
been founded in order that millions of men 
might be assured a peaceful development across 
the full extent of an entire continent. The 
stakes in such a combat were immense, and 
the fight was carried on with extreme energy. 
The war of the Secession lasted four years, 



14 President Wilson 

from 1 86 1 to 1865, ^^d the early childhood 
of Thomas Woodrow Wilson was shadowed 
by the tragedy. Once, at the age of four, he 
was playing by an open window and heard the 
conversation of two men in the street outside. 

"Have you heard the news?" said one. 
"Lincoln has been elected President." 

"Lincoln President?" replied the other. 
"There'll be war." 

These solemn words so impressed the child 
that he never forgot them. There was indeed 
war, and a terrible war. It exhausted men 
and money. Had the Southerners been victo- 
rious North America would have become a new 
Europe, divided into rival nations and con- 
demned to the enfeebling fatigue of hatred 
and of conflict. But they were conquered, and 
the formal unity of America was saved. 

Formal unity, let it be said. The real unity 
was almost wholly to be created, or to be re- 
created. The years following the War of Se- 
cession were equally difficult and sad. Amidst 
these difficulties and this unhappiness Wood- 
row Wilson conceived his first political reflec- 
tions. Thoughts were still in revolt, and in- 
stitutions were hardly tested. What was the 
value of these institutions? Europe had ad- 
mired them, America was vain of them. Per- 
haps it had been wiser to admire the excellence 



Childhood and Youth 15 

of the civic habits which distinguished the 
EngHsh-speaking populations, the happiness of 
a people for whom political shocks were very 
diminished by reason of the resources and in- 
finite immensity of the territory across which 
they were scattered. The Constitution of the 
United States has some original and useful fea- 
tures. For example, the Supreme Court which 
has ended so many conflicts and the happy and 
novel federal arrangements. But this Consti- 
tution, on the other hand, is an ingenious 
school exercise composed by some of IMontes- 
quieu's pupils. Montesquieu had explained 
the rare virtues of the English constitution in 
its division of power, resulting in a liberating 
strength. Executive power is separate from 
legislative power; the two Houses and the 
King counter-balance, holding each other mu- 
tually in check, exercising one upon the other 
an incessant control which blocks any attempt 
at tyranny. The American colonists wished 
to forestall all tyranny, and Montesquieu w^as 
their advisor. They maintained the inde- 
pendence of the States, and, in the federal gov- 
ernment, they introduced, and multiplied, in- 
dependent wheels. Judicial power had its 
proper source and independence; in the same 
manner the presidential power, and that of the 
House of Representatives and also of the Sen- 



16 President Wilson 

ate. The House and the Senate voted the laws 
but had nothing to do with their execution. 
The President carried them out with the as- 
sistance of his chosen ministers. The minis- 
ters had nothing to do with the making of the 
laws. They received them ready made as a 
manager receives the orders of his master. 
The President could veto a law voted by the 
Congress. But if the two chambers upheld it 
with a majority of one-third the President was 
bound to accept and execute it. These con- 
flicts have been by no means rare. The Con- 
stitution appears to have been made to provoke 
them, and to render them bitter. The Amer- 
ican President does not spring from the cham- 
bers as does the French president. He is 
found amongst the people, and it very fre- 
quently happens that he does not belong to the 
party dominating the chambers. The whole 
machinery has been ingeniously built up for 
the destruction of power and the annihilation 
of government. It is the masterpiece of the 
political philosophy of the eighteenth century. 
During the War of Secession the two parties 
corrected the faults of their traditional poli- 
tics by raising dictators. Lincoln, elected 
President by the North, was an admirable dic- 
tator with authority and prudence. But upon 
the return of peace, and with Lincoln assas- 



Childhood and Youth 17 

sinated, the old institutions regained their em- 
pire and displayed their weakness. The 
Southern States had to be reconciled, their re- 
turn to freedom required regulation without 
too much delay. In the midst of an extreme 
disorder wisdom and coolness were very nec- 
essary. The two houses were of one opinion, 
the President of another. The chambers 
looked for increased vigour and further ven- 
geance, the President desired continued indul- 
gence and firmer union. Congress refused to 
listen to the cautious warnings which came 
from President Johnson, and the President op- 
posed their laws with his veto. Congress, be- 
ing master of the laws, insisted upon them. 
President Johnson, being master of the exe- 
cution of the laws, busied himself in destroy- 
ing them. He had his following in the coun- 
try. He travelled from tow^n to town, making 
speeches, and insulting the House of Repre- 
sentatives, a body he described as ^'hanging on 
the verge of government.'' The House ac- 
cused him of High Treason. The Senate, be- 
ing the judges of the case, acquitted him. Dis- 
order follow^ed, whilst the country awaited a 
promised reconstruction. In the South the 
massed negroes, under the direction of political 
adventurers, seemed to threaten the civilisa- 
tion even of the old states of Virginia and 



18 President Wilson 

Georgia. In the North the demobilised sol- 
diers attached to the victorious party cried for 
help and spoils after the war. Congress voted 
them extravagant pensions, offices were dis- 
tributed as rewards, and demoralisation seized 
all the services of the State. 

Such were the facts which furnished mate- 
rial for the reflections of the youthful Wilson 
in and about his twentieth year (1876). A 
book must be mentioned which added to the 
facts and quickened the reflections, namely, 
Bagehot's essay on The English Constitution. 
Bagehot was a banker who devoted his leisure 
to political authorship. He endeavoured to find 
the veritable springs of this famous and deeply 
studied Constitution. He attacked Montes- 
quieu's ideas, showing them to possess neither 
foundation nor reality. He was strongly per- 
suaded that the function of power is action, 
and that action is possible only if energy be 
concentrated. Montesquieu had shown how 
energy was dispersed in the English constitu- 
tion, and had praised this aspect. In contra- 
diction to Montesquieu, Bagehot had discov- 
ered and praised a concentration of energy. 
He did not ignore, nor did he detract from, the 
peculiarly English utility of the royal power. 
He was in no sense a jacobin. But he saw in 
the practical constitution of the English state 



Childhood and Youth 19 

a Chamber which had power, and in this Cham- 
ber a party which had a majority. And this 
party was able to nominate a prime minister, 
who selected his collaborators and governed 
with their aid. The result was what Bagehot 
called ''cabinet government.'' 'The Ameri- 
cans of i/*"^/," he wrote, "thought they were 
copying the English Constitution, but they 
were contriving a contrast to it. Just as the 
American is the type of composite govern- 
ments, in which the supreme power is divided 
between many bodies and functionaries, so the 
English is the type of simple constitutions, in 
which the ultimate power upon all questions is 
in the hands of the same persons." 

The youthful Wilson read, observed, and 
thoroughly grasped the lesson taught by books 
and facts. His character was one of author- 
ity. Muddle w^as repugnant to him. His in- 
telligence was of a decisive nature; he loved 
to reason matters out to a conclusion. At the 
age of twenty-three he published in the Inter- 
national Review for August, 1879, ^^ article 
entitled "Cabinet Government in the United 
States." This essay, written under the influ- 
ence of Bagehot, reveals a clear knowledge of 
one of the problems which were about to oc- 
cupy the whole of his life. 

"Our patriotism [he wrote] seems of late 



20 President Wilson 

to have been exchanging its wonted tone of 
confident hope for one of desponding solici- 
tude. Anxiety about the future of our insti- 
tutions seems to be daily becoming stronger in 
the minds of thoughtful Americans. A feel- 
ing of uneasiness is undoubtedly prevalent, 
sometimes taking the shape of a fear that 
grave, perhaps radical, defects in our mode of 
government are militating against our liberty 
and prosperity. A marked and alarming de- 
cline in statesmanship, a rule of levity and 
folly instead of wisdom and sober forethought 
in legislation, threaten to shake our trust not 
only in the men by whom our national policy 
is controlled, but also in the very principles 
upon which our Government rests. Both 
State and National legislatures are looked upon 
with nervous suspicion, and we hail an ad- 
journment of Congress as a temporary im- 
munity from danger.*' 

In France we should call such language re- 
actionary. But care must be taken not to em- 
ploy too quickly words whose use is customary. 

Wilson observed around him a disposition 
to "throw discredit upon the principle of which 
the practice has been considered the honour 
and political glory of America — the right of 
every man to a voice in the government under 
which he lives.'' But it was a disposition with- 



Childhood and Youth 21 

out importance. European democracies are 
hindered in their development by remem- 
brances, by the example of strong institutions 
which have preceded them and which still sur- 
round them. Discontent and dissatisfaction 
thus inspired are inevitably fed and excited by 
these souvenirs and examples. Instead of con- 
triving and acting, instead of looking towards 
the future, their thoughts turn to a past they 
are unable to forget. Remains still exist of 
former institutions which still seem to be part 
of the present. Tempted sometimes to return 
to them, the success of such ventures is medi- 
ocre where it does not result in failure. And 
these experiments, which are indeed reaction- 
ary, exhaust all faculties of imagination, of 
action, of hope itself. But this temptation 
does not exist for the American peoples. In 
their short history they have known but one 
manner of being, and but a single political tra- 
dition — that of democracy. They must dis- 
appear, or contrive and advance in the prac- 
tice even of democracy. A good number have 
vanished. Others will save themselves per- 
haps by contrivance and invention. 

The youthful Wilson did not speak ill of 
democracy. This would have been lost time, 
and he had better work to be employed upon. 
He enjoyed a strong and hopeful confidence 



22 President Wilson 

which forms one of his characteristics, and 
is also one of the irrational, instinctive, and 
incoercible forces of his race. He saw clearly 
and defined the defect of the American consti- 
tution. That defect is the dispersion of en- 
ergies, the concerted paralysis of power. 

"There is no one in Congress to speak for 
the nation. Congress is a conglomeration of 
inharmonious elements; a collection of men 
representing each his neighbourhood, each his 
local interest; an alarmingly large proportion 
of its legislation is 'special'; all of it is at best 
only a limping compromise between the con- 
flicting interests of the innumerable localities 
represented. There is no guiding or harmon- 
ising power. Are the people in favour of a 
particular policy — what means have they of 
forcing it upon the sovereign legislature at 
Washington? None but the most imperfect. 
If they return representatives who favour it 
(and this is the most they can do), these rep- 
resentatives, being under no directing power, 
will find a mutual agreement impracticable 
among so many, and will finally settle upon 
some policy which satisfies nobody, removes 
no difficulty, and makes little definite or valu- 
able provision for the future." 

Direction is lacking. As Mr. Wilson felt 



Childhood and Youth 23 

and spoke at the age of twenty so he will al- 
ways feel and speak. A policy must be initi- 
ated. He wished it then, and the wish will 
continue. At the beginning of his career he 
discovered his problem and his aim. But the 
choice of a remedy will vary. The Executive 
and the Legislative being separated, the prob- 
lem is to establish between them a subordina- 
tion. There are two alternatives. The first is to 
subordinate the Executive to the Legislative; 
the second, to subordinate the Legislative to 
the Executive. In later life Mr. Wilson will 
practise the first solution. In his younger 
days he did not see the problem in this light. 
He remained under the influence of his read- 
ing, and the liberal and parliamentary ideas 
of the nineteenth century. He praised the 
methods of ''Cabinet Government" in the Eng- 
lish manner, that is to say the government of 
the state by a minister springing from the 
chambers and responsible to them. 'The Ex- 
ecutive is in constant need of legislative co-op- 
eration; the legislative must be aided by an 
Executive who is in a position intelligently 
and vigorously to execute its acts. There 
must needs be, therefore, a binding link be- 
tween them. . . . Such a link is the responsi- 
ble cabinet." 



24 President Wilson 

In 1880 Mr. Wilson published some essays 
on English politicians (John Bright and Glad- 
stone) in the magazine of the University of 
Virginia. At the end of 1880 he left this Uni- 
versity. He had knocked himself up through 
an excessive strain of intellectual work, and 
for a year he rested with his family. But he 
was without means and had to settle to a pro- 
fession. He decided to enter the law, and, in 
May, 1882, established himself in the new city 
of Atlanta. Life ran very keenly and there 
was much business. His choice seemed judi- 
cious. Mr. Wilson installed himself quite 
modestly; his simple office is still to be seen. 
He did not succeed. Without doubt he had 
too much taste for public affairs to interest 
himself deeply in private business. He waited 
for clients, but he did not know how to seek 
or attract them. He could not set aside his 
old habits of observation, of meditation upon 
historical and political problems. He had 
made a mistake in selecting his career, which 
he recognised after a year's waiting. Quit- 
ting Atlanta he returned to a university to 
finish studies and become a professor. He 
worked for three years. In 1885 he was given 
the charge of a historical course at Bryn Mawr 
College. He was then in his thirtieth year. 
His apprenticeship had been long and varied, 



Childhood and Youth 25 

but not unfruitful. He proved it by publish- 
ing during the same year 1885 a book entitled 
''Congressional Government; a Study of 
American Politics." A French translation of 
this work appeared in 1900. 

This book deserves our attention. Mr. 
Wilson takes up the thread again — and it is a 
sign of tenacious thought — of the observa- 
tions and the theses he published in 1879 in his 
first study. Ten years of experience fortified 
and enriched his ideas. ''Congressional Gov- 
ernment" is not a youthful work. Reading it 
gives us the measure of the man, reveals the 
instinctive lines of his thought and their out- 
come. 

The revelation is perhaps surprising. Little 
was known of Mr. Wilson before his Presi- 
dency, very little before the war suddenly con- 
ferred upon him the grandiose and unforeseen 
position of world arbiter. At first he was 
judged by those messages addressed to the 
American nation, eloquent pages glowing with 
religious and Christian thought and democratic 
idealism. But the note struck in these mes- 
sages is quite different from the tone of Wood- 
row Wilson's political studies, what may be 
called his lay work. In his personality, as in 
his family descent, there seems to be a double 



26 President Wilson 

tradition, a double inspiration, one religious, 
the other practical. On one side there is the 
man of action, the clear-headed politician who 
speaks in shrewd and concise language, who 
seeks truth alone and that only for the pur- 
poses of action. On the other hand we find a 
leader of the people, sacerdotal in character, 
who, addressing himself to the masses — to 
touch them more deeply perhaps, and the bet- 
ter to lead them (again and always for action) 
— speaks a solemn language and seeks the 
pathos of the old faiths. But the most active 
of the two personalities, the most constant, 
never sleeping, is the first. If the President's 
messages are read with care a political pru- 
dence can be detected, an authoritative and 
real ardour. But in the political writings we 
find nothing but politics. We use the word in 
its noblest meaning. A politician is he who 
has the vocation, the passion, and eventually 
the genius of country and of state. 

''Congressional Government" is at first 
sight the intelligent and lively production of a 
disciple of Bagehot w^ho, however, does not 
equal his master. The old London banker had 
an experience and a temperament very difiFer- 
ent from that of our young politician. But the 
personal note of the book, its superiority, in- 
vites comparison. Bagehot is an observer ani- 



Childhood mid Youth 27 



mated by curiosity, but Woodrow Wilson 
observes with a more passionate interest. He 
does not analyse every detail of the political 
machinery of his country for the pleasure of 
analysis and the discovery of unforeseen com- 
binations. His object is modification and 
amelioration. Perhaps already he is being 
stirred by a remote ambition for action, in or- 
der to make himself master of the machine. 

How do these powers — so wisely arranged 
— work in practice? A semi-religious respect 
had for a long while preserved the work of 
the founders of the nation from criticism. He 
broke away from this deferential tradition, and 
followed his own line of analysis with a rad- 
ical lack of respect. Woodrow Wilson wished 
to demonstrate that the idea of the American 
Constitution is false, and that its results are 
absurd. The Constitutionalists of 1787 tried 
to separate the three powers, executive, judi- 
cial, and legislative. By opposing these pow- 
ers their desire was to make them counterbal- 
ance each other in so perfect a way that they 
could never menace the liberty of the citizens. 
Their idea of the state was negative. They 
did not realise that the function of the state 
is positive and directing. Deprived of power 
and unity, a state cannot fulfil such functions. 
What happened? The Constitution has never 



28 President Wilson 

worked. It has always been expounded and 
circumvented by politicians. One of the three 
powers is always straining itself to assure the 
mastery at the expense of the other two. In 
the year 1885 when Mr. Wilson was writing 
'^Congressional Government," the parliament 
triumphed. The President was no more than 
head clerk. He no longer dared make use of 
the right of speaking directly to Congress; he 
no longer directed the legislative work of the 
chamber by his recommendations or vetoes. 
The two chambers succeeded in restraining 
and stifling his powers. The Supreme Court, 
which judged as to the very legality of the laws, 
was effaced, and allowed the legislative power 
to exercise the privilege of determining the na- 
ture, extent, and grounds of its own powers. 
Nothing remained. The House of Represen- 
tatives and the Senate, which together form 
Congress, became victors. But it was a sad 
victory. Congress was able to reduce its riv- 
als, but it was not able to overcome the laws 
enshrined in the Constitution. It was able to 
suppress the liberties of the Executive, but the 
Executive existed outside it, and was able to 
glide into office by a tortuous path. Congress 
was able to diminish and weaken the authority 
of the Secretaries of State. They continued 
to exist, however. The President appointed 



Childhood and Youth 29 

them, and Congress was not able to eject them. 
Congress was not able to hold those great de- 
bates of criticism and judgment which are the 
glory, the prestige, and the strength of the Eu- 
ropean Parliaments. The House of Repre- 
sentatives had to resign itself to obscure and 
confused work, divided into forty-seven com- 
mittees (which form its traditional organisa- 
tion) under the direction of forty-seven chair- 
men, each one the master in his limited domain, 
happy to preserve his authority by oblique 
methods of domination. Thus the primitive 
constitution was overthrown. A curious dis- 
integration reigned even in the institution 
which prevailed over the others. The effect of 
this disintegration was a continual adjustment, 
pettifoggery, explanation, which has been an 
unfavourable influence upon the American po- 
litical character. * 'We have always had plenty 
of excellent lawyers [wrote Mr. Wilson in 
^'Congressional Government"] though we have 
often had to do without even tolerable admin- 
istrators, and seem destined to endure the in- 
convenience of hereafter doing without any 
constructive statesmen at all.'* 

"Constructive!" The word is frequently 
used in the political phraseology of the United 
States of America. They speak of a construc- 
tive politician, of a constructive mind. Such 



30 President Wilson 

politicians and such intellects are rare. The 
need of them is often experienced and ex- 
pressed. Woodrow Wilson was one of the 
first to feel the need, one of the ablest to ex- 
press it. Would America always be able to 
continue without leaders and constructors? 
The answer was an assured ''no." She wanted 
them in the past, and discovered it during the 
difficult period of her formation as a state. 
''Washington and his Cabinet commanded the 
ear of Congress, and gave shape to its delib- 
erations; Adams, though often crossed and 
thwarted, gave character to the government; 
and Jefferson, as President no less than as Sec- 
retary of State, was the real leader of his 
party. . . . What with quarrelling and fight- 
ing with England, buying Louisiana and Flor- 
ida, building dykes to keep out the flood of the 
French Revolution, and extricating the coun- 
try from ceaseless broils with the South Amer- 
ican Republics, the government was, as has 
been pointed out, constantly busy, during the 
first quarter century of its existence, with the 
adjustment of foreign relations ; and with for- 
eign relations, of course, the Presidents had 
everything to do, since theirs was the office of 
negotiation." From 1830 difficulties lessened. 
The American people settled in comfort across 
its vast domain. The political parties organ- 



Childhood and Youth 31 

ised themselves, and succeeded in diminishing 
the presidential authority. When the presi- 
dential candidate came to be chosen, it was 
recognised as imperatively necessary that he 
should have as short a political record as pos- 
sible, and that he should wear a clean and ir- 
reproachable insignificance. ''Gentlemen," said 
a distinguished American public man, ''I 
would make an excellent President, but a very 
poor candidate/' A decisive career which 
gives a man a well-understood place in public 
estimation constitutes a positive disability for 
the presidency; because candidacy must pre- 
cede election, and the shoals of candidacy can 
be passed only by a light boat which carries 
little freight and can be turned readily about 
to suit the intricacies of the passage. 

Thus were the Constitution and the political 
customs of the Republic of the United States 
of America as they appeared in 1885. Wood- 
row Wilson saw the urgency of reform. The 
country was growing In strength and becoming 
conscious of its growth. And, with the same 
movement, the souls of the people were forti- 
fied by national sentiment. "The war between 
the States [wrote Mr. Wilson] was the su- 
preme and final struggle between those forces 
of disintegration which still remained in the 
blood of the body politic and those other forces 



32 President Wilson 

of health, of union and amalgamation, which 
had been gradually building up that body in 
vigour and strength as the system passed from 
youth to maturity, and as its constitution hard- 
ened and ripened with advancing age." The 
victory of the North, the defeat of the separa- 
tists, ended these juvenile vacillations. The 
Republic of the United States of America was 
henceforth one of the first powers of the 
world. But the political State, motive force 
of this power, remained a weak machine. How 
was its infirmity to be cured? During the ten 
years that Mr. Wilson was studying and work- 
ing, he does not seem to have concerned him- 
self with any other question. How could this 
crumbling and disintegrating State be given 
the necessary strength and unity? How could 
It find the personal authority, in a word, the 
leadership, which — and Woodrow Wilson real- 
ised it from that moment — is the condition of 
energetic national action, or of any other ac- 
tion? 

^Tf there be one principle clearer than an- 
other, [he wrote] it is this : that in any business, 
whether of government or of mere merchandis- 
ing, somebody must be trusted, in order that 
when things go wrong it may be quite plain who 
should be punished. In order to drive trade at 
the speed and with the success you desire, you 



Childhood and Youth 33 

must confide without suspicion in your chief 
clerk, giving him the power to ruin you, be- 
cause you thereby furnish him with a motive 
for serving you. His reputation, his own hon- 
our or disgrace, all his own commercial pros- 
pects, hang upon your success. And human 
nature is much the same in government as in 
the dry-goods trade. Power and strict ac- 
countability for its use are the essential con- 
stituents of good government. A sense of 
highest responsibility, a dignifying and ele- 
vating sense of being trusted, together with a 
consciousness of being in an official station so 
conspicuous that no faithful discharge of duty 
can go unacknowledged and unrewarded, and 
no breach of trust undiscovered and unpun- 
ished, — these are the influences, the only influ- 
ences, w^hich foster practical, energetic, and 
trustworthy statesmanship. The best rulers 
are always those to whom great power is in- 
trusted in such a manner as to make them feel 
that they will surely be abundantly honoured 
and recompensed for a just and patriotic use 
of it, and to make them know that nothing can 
shield them from full retribution for every 
abuse of it." 

Reform was necessary. Mr. Wilson, in 
ending his book, proposed a project of reform. 
We know it already, for it is the same idea he 



34 President Wilson 

expressed in his essay of 1879, and that Bage- 
hot had taught him. ''Since Congress has over- 
come the two concurrent powers/' he said, ''let 
us recognise the fact, and celebrate the victory 
by disembarrassing it of the iron bands of the 
Constitution. Let us give it, as in the English 
ParHament, the right of selecting the leader 
who will direct his Party and govern the coun- 
try." Mr. Wilson deceived himself, and he rec- 
ognised the fact later. The reform he pro- 
posed was valueless, for it was without true 
foundation. Mr. Wilson's wisdom was dis- 
turbed by the traditions of the European nine- 
teenth century, by the example of that Eng- 
lish parliamentarism which produced such ad- 
mirable leaders as Disraeli and Gladstone. 
Mr. Wilson did not value exactly, perhaps did 
not measure at all, the vitality of the presiden- 
tial institution as it exists in the United States, 
based upon a popular vote renewed every four 
years. He judged it by analogy with the 
Presidencies and the Constitutional Monar- 
chies of Europe. At the moment of his ob- 
servations it was far from active. He believed 
it to be expiring. But it only slept. Wash- 
ington and Lincoln had occupied the seat and 
glorified it in the past. Why should its future 
be without glory? The nation remained at- 



Childhood and Youth 35 

tached to this institution by habit and with 
hope. To alter it was far from wise. 

We cannot be surprised at Mr. Wilson's er- 
ror. No student could have foreseen, no the- 
oretical observer could have foretold, the rapid 
enlargement, the unheard of development of 
the presidential function. This spontaneous^ 
change is one of the most singular surprises 
of history. The seed had been planted in rich 
soil. 



II — Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 

MR. WILSON'S work is easy to 
follow because it is logical. At 
the age of twenty, the events of 
everyday life attracted his atten- 
tion towards the problem of the American 
state. He studied the problem for ten years, 
and it became the subject of his first book. And 
now, though remote and detached from it, he 
enlarged the scope of the matter and studied 
it more profoundly. In a retreat honoured by 
time he occupied himself with the problem to 
its fullest extent. The subject he desired to 
make his own was the essentials of a State, as 
manifested in its consciousness and moral 
sense. What is the English state, the German 
state, the French state ? What were the medi- 
aeval and classical states? What is a Parlia- 
ment or a bureaucracy? In short, what is a 
state, and what are its functions? After three 
years of investigation Mr. Wilson published a 
book entitled, 'The State: Elements of His- 
torical and Practical Politics." This excellent 
manual had a great success in American uni- 
versities, and was soon translated into French. 

36 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 37 

It is not the work of a scholar, for Mr. Wilson 
does not toil over the texts, and seeks his in- 
formation at second hand. It is not the work 
of an inventive thinker. Mr. Wilson does not 
strive to construct a theory. He adopts the 
formula in vogue with the sociological school. 
The book is one of vigorous and comprehen- 
sive intelligence, which sets out solidly and con- 
cisely conclusions drawn from all useful facts. 
He does not give a dissertation upon the na- 
ture of a state, or its origin, or the limits of its 
rights. His point of view is entirely positive, 
"historical and practical,'* as the title warns 
us. He considers human societies as organ- 
isms with laws, functions, and directing mem- 
bers of which the first is the state. By means 
of the state ''society adapts itself to its sur- 
roundings and realises a more active life.'' The 
state is a directing organisation. This is the 
reason of its existence, and the more surely 
it directs the more valuable it becomes. ''The 
essential* characteristic of all government, 
whatever its form, is authority. There must 
in every instance be, on the one hand, gover- 
nors and, on the other, those who are governed. 
And the authority of governors, directly or in- 
directly, rests in all cases ultimately on force." 
Wilson did not believe in the decline of author- 
ity. The functions of the modern state did not 



38 President Wilson 

seem to him essentially different from those 
of the states of antiquity. Was he then actu- 
ally a conservative, and had the experience of 
a new v^orld meant nothing to him? This v^as 
not the case, and one of his observations must 
be quoted. Authority, he considered, should 
be exercised, and must be exercised, in a dif-^ 
ferent manner to-day. ''Government does not 
necessarily exist by open force [he wrote]. 
And indeed, it is very necessary that there 
should be some other foundation. Military 
despotisms are becoming rare and more pre- 
carious. The people are no longer disinte- 
grated as in feudal society and the ancient mon- 
archies; they form massed bodies, and their 
powers of assent or opposition are very great. 
The power of the majority is the innovation 
of the modern world. And the statesman's 
art to-day is to awaken, to arouse, and to di- 
rect this new force/' 

These words must be italicized. It is im- 
possible to read them without immediately be- 
lieving that at some later time they will find 
their application. 

This book on ''The State'' is the only sci- 
entific work he has written. It made his repu- 
tation. In 1890 he was called to the Chair of 
Jurisprudence in the University of Princeton, 
where he had finished his studies. He ac- 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 39 

cepted the offer at once, and entered a higher 
circle in which he developed and fulfilled his 
university career. 

The University of Princeton has existed 
since the year 1746. It is one of the most an- 
cient universities in America. Only Harvard, 
Yale, and William and Mary are older. Orig- 
inally a religious foundation, the University 
of Princeton was established by the Calvinistic 
Presbyterian Church to which the Wilson fam- 
ily was attached. It remained affiliated to that 
church, and for a considerable time followed 
the tradition of selecting its presidents from 
amongst the Presbyterian dignitaries. This 
rule was not departed from until the end of 
the nineteenth century. The names of Prince- 
ton and of its University often recur in the 
history of the United States. Washington's 
soldiers were beaten under its walls, and traces 
of the combat are still shown. In 1783 an as- 
sembly of the new states held session in its 
halls, and it was at Princeton that Washing- 
ton wrote and issued his Farewell to the Army. 
The University is in the State of New Jersey 
which borders upon the State of New York. 
Thus it is able to share the life of both North 
and East, and to participate in the culture of 
that part of America which is closest to Eu- 



40 President Wilson 

rope and still remains attached to the older 
continent. A great number of young men 
from the Southern States customarily enter 
their names on its books. Thus it is linked to 
another and different America, which has a life 
with interests and passions of its own, its own 
history, manners, and local pride. Princeton 
University is in the highest degree a national 
University, with all the peaceful majesty of 
those old universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, its ancestors and exemplars. In addi- 
tion it possesses the wealth of American insti- 
tutions. Old pupils, the alumni, cherish and 
endow it with gifts. Occupying a domain 
which covers some five hundred acres, its halls, 
libraries, residences, and laboratories are scat- 
tered amidst the verdure. The lake is nearly 
three miles long. Carnegie gave the money 
which was necessary for the enlargement upon 
such a scale of the River Milletone which runs 
along the estate. Old, rich, and active, the 
University enjoys a prestige which benefits its 
teachers and its presidents. Its professors re- 
ceive much consideration in American society, 
and its presidents are invested with a very high 
authority. 

Public life was the true vocation of Mr. Wil- 
son. His new position at the university af- 
forded him facilities which he made use of 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 41 

without delay. He set about making himself 
known other than as a man of science or a spe- 
cialist. He spoke well. This talent was the 
result of long application and a foreseeing«will. 
His friend and biographer, Mr. Henry Jones 
Ford, says that he cultivated his faculty for 
public speaking with a view to public service. 
He wrote well. His style was refined and ex- 
act, naturally animated and persuasive. His 
father acted as a judge and adviser. All his 
writings were read to the old man who exacted 
an absolute clearness of expression. He 
would stop his son — 

''What does that sentence mean?'* 

The son explained with all the clearness of 
which he was capable. Then the father would 
reply : 

''You must say it thus. A target must be hit 
in the buH's-eye. You are not shooting at birds 
with small shot which spread over the whole 
country.'' * 

"My father taught me," said Mr. Wilson, 
"to think in definitions." 

Mr. Wilson wished to make himself heard. 
He desired to intervene in the discussion of 
ideas, in those high polemics which occupy and 
exercise the cultivated classes of every coun- 

*See a conversation with the President, by Ida M. Tarbell, 
in Collier's for October 28, 1916. 



42 President Wilson 

try. Was Mr. Wilson at that moment plan- 
ning a political future? The statement can- 
not be affirmed with any certainty, although 
many indications allow us to suppose it. As 
d youth he had thought of such a career. As 
a man was he likely to be distracted and turned 
aside from such a path ? Was he able to for- 
get an ambition so fully justified by education 
and natural gifts? We cannot believe it. Mr. 
Wilson is tenacious in his designs as in his 
views. He renounces little easily. But the 
entry to a political career is difficult. Profes- 
sional politicians guard the gates very care- 
fully. Where novices are not welcomed it is 
necessary to wait until increased importance 
permits the newcomer to impose himself. 
Probably this was Mr. Wilson's plan. He was 
thirty-five years of age. Life was before him, 
and his chances were exceedingly good. For a 
while he neglected political discussion. As a 
university professor he made himself known, 
and he dealt with the more general problems 
of pedagogy and the intellectual life. 

These problems are well known to us. The 
same questions are propounded in the same 
years in the same terms in the United States 
as in France. A single movement of ideas ani- 
mates both the worlds of Europe and America. 
What is the value of science? How can its 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 43 

utility, and its limits, be defined? What is the 
value of traditional culture? How can we 
agree the exigencies of a general culture with 
the technical education of youth? These ques- 
tions have occupied and even divided French 
opinion, and it is interesting to have Mr. Wil- 
son's judgments. These verdicts always coin- 
cide with those arrived at in France and in Eu- 
rope by the conservative bodies of opinion. 
We need not conclude that Mr. \\^ilson is a 
conservative according to the fashion of the 
old world, for it must be remembered that 
American traditions and lines of thought are 
different from ours. Without seeking to clas- 
sify him according to definitions which will 
not meet his case, and in parties to which he 
does not belong, we must listen attentively, and 
endeavour to understand his reasoning. 

W^e have already seen that Air. Wilson's re- 
flections in the political field followed at first 
a clear direction. He believed that force, au- 
thority, and the independence of the State were 
social necessities to be fully guaranteed. In 
the teaching world Mr. Wilson selected his 
points of view, and insisted upon his ideas with 
the same quickness and lucidity. His first in- 
terest in the education of an individual was the 
social rather than the individual value which is 
likely to accrue. In 1893 he delivered an ad- 



44 President Wilson 

dress at the International Congress of Educa- 
tion at Chicago, and he explained himself in 
clear terms. "There is a two- fold aspect of 
the educational question/' he said. "It may be 
discussed from the point of view of the indi- 
vidual who is seeking professional instruction 
as a means of gaining a livelihood, or from the 
point of view of society itself, which must wish 
to be well served by its professional classes. 
The community will doubtless be inclined to de- 
mand more education than the individual will 
be willing to tarry for before entering on the 
practice of his profession/' Confronted with 
these two points of view, "the self-interest of 
the individual, or the self-interest of the com- 
munity,'' Mr. Wilson at once made up his mind. 
He did not think (as an Anglo-Saxon of the 
nineteenth century would naturally have 
thought) that the individual is the best judge 
of the education he personally considers nec- 
essary, and that the convenience of society is 
after all the sum of individual conveniences. 
On the contrary the needs of society are differ- 
ent and more important. "The practical side 
of this question is certainly a very serious one 
in this country [he wrote]. That there should 
be an almost absolute freedom of occupation 
is a belief very intimately and tenaciously con- 
nected with the democratic theory of govern- 



Essayist and Historian^ 1890-1902 45 

ment, and our legislators are very slow to lay 
many restrictions upon it. Our colleges and 
universities, and our law and medical and the- 
ological schools have seldom endowment 
enough to render them independent of popular 
demands and standards." He asked that the 
high schools and universities should acquire 
this liberty, and succeed in insisting upon the 
level culture which is necessary for organised 
humanity. The task was incumbent upon 
them, for the American state did not concern 
itself about education. What should a uni- 
versity teach if it w^ished to be worthy of so 
old and grand a name? Mr. Wilson examined 
the problem in an article which he published in 
the Forum for September, 1894. 

*'In order to be national, a university should 
have, at the centre of all its training, courses 
of instruction in that literature which contains 
the ideals of its race and all the nice proofs and 
subtle inspirations of the character, spirit, and 
thought of the nation which it serves; and, be- 
sides that, instruction in the history and lead- 
ing conceptions of those institutions which 
have served the nation's energies in the pres- 
ervation of order and the maintenance of just 
standards of civil virtue and public purpose. 
These should constitute the common training 
of all its students, as the only means of school- 



46 President Wilson 

ing their spirits for their common life as citi- 
zens. For the rest, they might be free to 
choose what they would learn. . . . The world 
in which we live is troubled by many voices, 
seeking to proclaim righteousness and judg- 
ment to come; but they disturb without in- 
structing us. . . . There is no corrective for 
it all like a wide acquaintance with the best 
books that men have written, joined with a 
knowledge of the institutions men have made 
trial of in the past ; and for each nation there 
is its own record of mental experience and po- 
litical experiment. Such a record always so- 
bers those who read it. It also steadies the 
nerves. If all educated men knew it, it would 
be as if they had had a revelation. They could 
stand together and govern, with open eyes and 
the gift of tongues which other men could un- 
derstand. Here is like wild talk and headlong 
passion for reform in the past, — here in the 
books, — with all the motives that underlay the 
perilous utterance now laid bare : these are not 
new terrors and excitements. Neither need 
the wisdom be new, nor the humanity, by which 
they shall be moderated and turned to right- 
eous ends. There is old experience in these 
matters, or rather in these states of mind. It 
is no new thing to have economic problems and 
dream dreams of romantic and adventurous 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 47 

social reconstruction. And so it is out of books 
that we can get our means and our self-pos- 
session for a sane and systematic criticism of 
life." 

Such is the fundamental idea which he ex- 
plains and develops in his pedagogic studies. 
This great American is opposed to what in Eu- 
rope we are accustomed to call Americanism. 
He scorns the hasty work of the moderns, their 
superficiality and the self-sufficiency of their 
thought. Pushing it aside, he seeks a remedy, 
and finds it in the constant advocacy of a 
knowledge of the past. 

In October, 1896, at Princeton itself, com- 
missioned to deliver an address at a university 
solemnity, he selected for his subject, ^Trince- 
ton in the nation's service." 

"I have no laboratory but the world of books 
and men in which I live; but I am much mis- 
taken if the scientific spirit of the age is not 
doing us a disservice, working in us a certain 
great degeneracy. Science has bred in us a 
spirit of experiment and a contempt for the 
past. It has made us credulous of quick im- 
provement, hopeful of discovering panaceas, 
confident of success in every new thing. . . . 
It has given us agnosticism in the realm of 
philosophy, scientific anarchism in the field of 
politics. . . . 



48 President Wilson 

*'Let me say once more, this is not the fault 
of the scientist ; he has done his work with an 
intelligence and success which cannot be too 
much admired. It is the work of the noxious, 
intoxicating gas which has somehow got into 
the lungs of the rest of us from out the crev- 
ices of his workshop — a gas, it would seem, 
which forms only in the outer air, and where 
men do not know the right use of their lungs. 
I should tremble to see social reform led by 
men who had breathed it ; I should fear nothing 
better than utter destruction from a revolution 
conceived and led in the scientific spirit. Sci- 
ence has not changed the nature of society, has 
not made history a whit easier to understand, 
human nature a whit easier to reform. It 
has won for us a great liberty in the physical 
world, a liberty from superstitious fear and 
from disease, a freedom to use nature as a fa- 
miliar servant; but it has not freed us from 
ourselves. It has not purged us of passion or 
disposed us to virtue. It has not made us less 
covetous or less ambitious or less self-indulg- 
ent. On the contrary, it may be suspected of 
having enhanced our passions, by making 
wealth so quick to come, so fickle to stay. It 
has wrought such instant, incredible improve- 
ment in all the physical setting of our life, that 
we have grown the more impatient of the unre- 



Essaijist and Historian, 1890-1902 49 

formed condition of the part it has not touched 
or bettered, and we want to get at our spirits 
and reconstruct them in Hke radical fashion by 
Hke processes of experiment. We have broken 
wath the past and have come into a new world. 

*'Can any one wonder, then, that I ask for 
the old drill, the old memory of times gone by, 
the old schooling in precedent and tradition, 
the old keeping of faith with the past, as a 
preparation for leadership in days of social 
change?" 

This address created great interest, says his 
biographer, Mr. Ford, and was reproduced in 
many reviews and newspapers. The educative 
and moral value of science w^as then — as in 
Europe — a matter of study and debate. In 
these discussions Mr. Wilson's address was of 
outstanding importance, and his name was 
quoted as an authority. His fine oratorical 
gifts commenced to be known. Towns, col- 
leges, associations of every kind sought for him 
and wished to hear him. Mr. Wilson lacked 
the movement, the warm passion, the inven- 
tive and lyrical imagination of a Bryan. He 
had not the familiar impetuosity of a Theodore 
Roosevelt. His word did not fascinate or cap- 
tivate from the first moment of utterance. 
But, gradually improving, it at last forced itself 
upon and dominated its auditors. 



50 President Wilson 

Thus Mr. Wilson was sensible of a growing 
and well disposed public interest. He re- 
sponded to this attention by writing some 
books of a public and almost popular nature. 

In 1892 he had published an historical study 
entitled ''Division and Reunion/' which nar- 
rated, with the precision of a manual rather 
than the charm of a story, the history of the 
United States between 1829 and 1889. This 
book is excellent. Events are analysed and 
men's characters are drawn with a masterly 
touch. But it was a student's book and had no 
other aim. In 1897 he published his large bi- 
ography of Washington. 

His best literary work, it is in every respect 
excellent. The insight and success of the at- 
tempt prove the author's power. He wished 
to write a biography, almost a novel. He 
wished to tell the story of Washington, his 
family, his friends, his home, to make him live 
again — from birth to death — amidst a multi- 
tude of private and public events. He man- 
aged it without the reader experiencing the 
slightest sense of effort. The work has charm 
and strength, and that continuity which holds 
the reader to the last page. Mr. Wilson could 
have shown more plainly the limitations of his 
hero, whose nature was slightly narrow and 
dull. He saw them very clearly, and indicated 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 51 

them perhaps sufficiently. He was an image 
maker rather than a portrait painter. He de- 
sired to produce a book wholly popular and na- 
tional after the fashion, in a previous genera- 
tion, of Thiers and Guizot. This was the task 
he attempted, and he fulfilled it with entire suc- 
cess. 

Here is the Virginia in which Washington 
was born. The colony was formed by English 
royalist families who refused to bow down to 
the Puritan revolution, the regicides, and the 
Commonwealth. Washington belonged to 
these families, which carried to America their 
old mode of life, their aristocratic and rural 
manners, their feeling for authority and feu- 
dalism. From the age of twenty Washington 
administered and increased the family estates. 
He explored and surveyed new^ lands beyond 
the forests and the mountains. He com- 
manded the militia, and fought against the 
French troops and the Indians. When the 
London Parliament undertook to tax the 
American colonists, Washington, an English 
gentleman, felt that his rights had been in- 
jured. The militia armed, and elected him 
their leader. Washington had too much hon- 
our to evade the tasks proposed. He accepted, 
and became the general of the new States of 
America. He was given undisciplined volun- 



52 President Wilson 

teers. For five years he lived with them, cre- 
ating soldiers and an army. He v^as often 
beaten, was never discouraged. He could not 
imagine abandoning the task he had under- 
taken. He held himself ever ready in the 
case of a supreme reverse to cross the moun- 
tains with the fragments of his army, and to 
retire to the unexplored depths and the liberty 
of the vast refuges offered by the American 
continent. His constancy prevailed. England 
became weary, and the colonists were conquer- 
ors and free. Laying down their arms they 
returned to their workshops and their fields. 
Washington returned to his own lands. The 
task appeared to be finished. It was not. The 
liberated colonists had not been able to consti- 
tute themselves into a state. They separated 
and quarrelled. Would America, like Europe, 
become the sanguinary arena of divided races? 
Or, on the contrary, would it become a union 
of free and settled peoples? All the Ameri- 
cans who wished for the latter turned towards 
the leader who had commanded them as a 
whole and secured their freedom. Washing- 
ton heard their appeal. He had never wished 
to become a conqueror in order to produce a 
new discord in the world. He desired the es- 
tablishment of a strong and armed state. *'We 
are either a united people, or we are not so/' 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 53 

cried Washington. "If the former, let us in 
all matters of general concern act as a nation 
which has a national character to support; if 
we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pre- 
tending to it." 

Some colonies were gravely troubled. Ex- 
treme democrats refused to pay taxes. Mod- 
erate democrats hesitated to force them, and 
wished to restore peace by negotiation and 
diplomatic influence. ''You talk, my good sir," 
wrote Washington to one of these moderates 
(Henry Lee), ''of employing influence to ap- 
pease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I 
know not where that influence is to be found, 
or, if attainable, that it would be a proper rem- 
edy for the disorders. Infliieyice is no gov- 
ernment. Let us have one by which our lives, 
liberties, and properties will be secured, or let 
us know the worst at once." 

Washington and his friends succeeded in 
voting a new Constitution. The United States 
of America were given a government, an army, 
a justiciary, a federal chief. Then came the 
question of selecting the first chief, the first 
President of the United States of America. 
The people, who had the right of election, knew 
but a single name, that of one man — Wash- 
ington. 

He governed for eight years, always with 



54 President Wilson 

prudence and authority, and as a stern 
guardian of the laws. Parliament and peo- 
ple often resisted him. When revolutionary 
France entered into the fight against England 
a powerful party wished to ally itself with the 
new republic. Washington did not approve of 
the French ideas, and opposed the alliance. He 
was insulted and lampooned, yet the injuries 
and the caricatures did not diminish his pro- 
found popularity. Proposals were made to 
elect him President for a third term. He did 
not wish for further office, but desired to re- 
tire and end his life on his own estates. So 
far as any man is able to fulfil his task Wash- 
ington accomplished his. For a few years he 
was allowed to enjoy the existence of a country 
gentleman. It was a life he preferred to any 
other, and only the hazards of history had 
troubled it. 

Such was a career, of which it has justly 
been said that it modified the idea of human 
greatness. No one has told the story with 
more interest and more nobility than Mr. Wil- 
son. He was delighted, it seems, to express 
throughout his book all that the old world be- 
queathed of any value to the young American 
nation. Clearly Mr. Wilson was persuaded 
of the importance and the excellence of this 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 55 

legacy. He sympathised with this gentleman 
who had founded a nation and resisted all 
demagogic enthusiasms.* And clearly Mr. 
Wilson was attached to old England by thought 
as well as by blood. We must take care not 
to draw wrong inferences from this book 
or from university lectures presently to be 
quoted. Mr. Wilson is profoundly an Amer- 
ican, a man renewed through contact with the 
soil, with a new atmosphere, and ever ready 
for innovation. He is the son of an Amer- 

*Mr. W^ilson has no enthusiasm for the French Revolution. 
He allows this to be seen in his story of the life of Wash- 
ington, and he expressed himself still more clearly in a 
study on "Burke and the French Revolution" which appeared 
in the Century Magazine for September, 1901. I owe a 
knowledge of this study to the help and vast reading of 
M. Rene de Kerallain, who resumes it as follows : **It is a 
sincere euIog>' of Burke, and a spirited defence of his atti- 
tude towards the French Revolution. They make a mistake, 
argued the Professor [as to the President of to-day I do 
not know] who reproach Burke for having lost his head and 
not understanding that a drastic revolution was necessary 
to purge France of her abuses. But Burke saw more than 
France. He saw in the Revolution *a revolution of doc- 
trine and theoretic dogma/ of rationalism to excess, and all 
which logically follows." Wilson pointed out the epidemic 
and contagious nature of these principles. "H the French 
revolutionary doctrines [he wrote] had taken root in Eng- 
land, what then? They did not . . ." Burke, resisting as 
he did, spoke the true mind of England. And this is the 
conclusion of the article: "After you have seen and done 
your duty, then philosophers may talk of it, and assess it 
as they will. Burke was right, and was himself, when he 
sought to keep the French infection out of England." 



56 President Wilson 

ican, the grandson of an immigrant, who, push- 
ing out towards the West, founded his fortune 
by the combined effort of his brains and his 
hands. He knew in what manner his country 
was Hnked to the old world. He knew exactly 
where it changed, and commenced to be itself. 
Listen to what he said, in May, 1895^ at the 
fiftieth anniversary of the Historical Society 
of the State of New Jersey: 

"What, in fact, has been the course of 
American history? How is it to be distin- 
guished from European history? What fea- 
tures has it of its own, which give it its distinc- 
tive plan and movement? We have suffered, 
it is to be feared, a very serious limitation of 
view until recent years by having all our history 
written in the East. It has smacked strongly 
of a local flavour. It has concerned itself too 
strongly with the origins and old world deriva- 
tions of our story. Our historians have made 
their march from the sea with their heads over 
shoulder, their gaze always backward upon the 
landing places and homes of the first settlers. 
In spite of the steady immigration, with its per- 
sistent tide of foreign blood, they have chosen 
to speak often and to think always of our peo- 
ple as sprung after all from a common stock, 
bearing a family likeness in every branch, and 
following all the while old, familiar family 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 57 

ways. The view is the more misleading be- 
cause it is so large a part of the truth without 
being all of it. The common British stock did 
first make the country, and has always set the 
pace. There were common institutions up 
and down the coast ; and these had formed and 
hardened for a persistent growth before the 
great westward migration began, which was to 
reshape and modify every element of our life. 

"But, the beginnings once safely made, 
change set in apace. . . . Until they had 
turned their backs once for all upon the sea; 
until they saw our w^estern borders cleared of 
the French; until the mountain passes had 
grown familiar, and the lands beyond had be- 
come the central and constant theme of their 
hope, the goal and dream of their young men, 
they did not become an American people. . . . 
The West' is the great w^ord of our history. 
The 'Westerner' has been the type and master 
of our American life." 

Mr. Wilson finished his speech by drawing 
a vivacious portrait of Lincoln, the hero of the 
West, a son of pioneers, a wanderer amidst 
forests and over virgin waters, great by the 
youthfulness of his intellect and heart, great 
in his wisdom, subtlety, and energy. These 
gifts of nature carried him to the headship of 
the people. "In Lincoln [he said] you have 



58 President Wilson 

the type of flower of our growth. It is as if 
Nature had made a typical American and then 
added with liberal hand the royal quality of 
genius, to show us what the type should be/' * 
Washington and Lincoln, the two outstand- 
ing figures of the United States, have both been 
studied by Mr. Wilson. Their glory was due 
through merit. But they deserved it by some- 
thing more than their merit. By a tragic 
chance these men became at the same time not 
only heads of the state but also heads of the 
army. Under the direction of Washington 
the Americans entered into the war which 
freed them. Under the direction of Lincoln 
they entered into the civil war which saved the 
unity, the accord, the combination of the New 
World. Led by these two men they sacrificed 
themselves and gave their children by thou- 

*There is a delightful page upon Lincoln in the conversa- 
tion recorded by Ida M. Tarbell. "Lincoln [said the Presi- 
dent enthusiastically] was the incarnation of what I call 
Americanism. He began his career as a prairie politician. 
He came from the rudest stock. But everything helped to 
form him, inform him, transform him. He learned as he 
went along. He arrived, knew nothing, and suddenly knew 
everything. When he came at first he knew nothing of the 
East. But from his first speech he conquered it, as he showed 
that he understood it thoroughly. Until the day he was 
made President he lacked every attribute of a President. 
He was a man of the people — with genius. He understood 
the West, the conservative East, even the South. As for 
the North, no man of the North has understood it so well. 
A marvellous person !" 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 59 

sands. They conquered, and the names of 
their leaders reflect the immeasurable glory 
they had all acquired. Blood has always a 
singular authority. It founds, consecrates, 
and dominates history. To these two names a 
third will be added in the future. Washing- 
ton, Lincoln, Wilson! The first two are to- 
day ideals. A century has passed, revealing 
them as a whole, and permitting us to judge 
them. The first traditionally incarnates the 
age and nobility of the race; the second, a 
youthful renaissance of the race upon new soil, 
the rough zest of a pioneer people. How will 
Mr. Wilson historically appear in the future? 
To the future must be left the liberty of its 
judgments. We must remain content to learn 
the origins and development of this strong- 
minded and wise American, so different from 
his predecessors, a man of an intellectual type 
who formed his character in the New World 
he aspired to direct. 

High university problems, and the history of 
the past, did not distract Mr. Wilson from his 
young and living country. He had political 
ambitions which he did not forget. But in the 
year 1897, marked by the publication of his 
biography of Washington, some events took 



60 President Wilson 

place which attracted his attention. They 
must now be mentioned. 

Mr. Cleveland terminated his presidency. 
There have been few so interesting in the his- 
tory of the United States. Mr. Cleveland be- 
longed to the Democratic party, and, like Mr. 
Wilson, to the conservative section .of that 
party. As a President he had governed. He 
was intrepid, and possessed common sense. He 
saw things clearly, and never hesitated. Ex- 
terior problems he met with considerable im- 
portance, and dared to determine them. He 
peremptorily stopped the imprudent action of 
an American consul in Hawaii. He entered 
with authority into an energetic action against 
England which wished to impose itself upon 
Venezuela. He addressed an ultimatum, had 
war credits voted, and compelled England to 
accept the judgment of arbitrators. He had 
no less resolution when faced by his party. He 
succeeded in removing some thousands of pub- 
lic appointments from electoral influences, and 
refused to follow a demagogic financial policy. 
This refusal broke his career, and ended his 
presidency. Cleveland was a great man who 
had not been given full scope by opportunity. 
But if he did not do great things, he knew how 
to give a great example, and how to break the 
bonds which shackled the presidential office. 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 61 

The example was not lost to such an ardent 
observer as Mr. Wilson. This professor, al- 
ready known in America for his useful books 
and his sure and firm speech, was in reality a 
man of action and of self-contained strength. 
Cleveland's deeds interested him profoundly. 
He suddenly discovered in them the solution 
of the chief problem of American politics. He 
had searched for it in books and foreign tradi- 
tion. He thought he had found it in an imi- 
tation of British parliamentarism disciplined 
by a prime minister, leader of his party, and 
head of the government. But no fact con- 
firmed this theoretical suggestion. With the 
most lively interest he observed the quite dif- 
ferent attempt of a practical politician, a presi- 
dent of the republic who energetically endeav- 
oured to render his presidency effective. In 
March, 1897, at the moment when Mr. Cleve- 
land relinquished power, Mr. Wilson published 
in the Atlantic Monthly a eulogy of startling 
warmth. "It is plain [he wrote] that Mr. 
Cleveland has rendered the country great serv- 
ices, and that his singular independence and 
force of purpose have made the real character 
of the Government of the United States more 
evident than it ever was before. He has been 
the sort of President the makers of the Consti- 
tution had vaguely in mind: more man than 



62 President Wilson 

partisan, with an independent will of his own; 
hardly a colleague of the Houses so much as 
an individual servant of the country; exercis- 
ing his powers like a chief magistrate rather 
than like a party leader." 

Mr. Wilson then wrote a popular history of 
the American people of which we are to have a 
French translation. 

''I have written this book in order to teach 
myself the history of my country," he said to 
his publisher, in handing over the manuscript. 

*'When," replied the publisher, *'will you 
yourself begin to make history?" 

His strength was being recognised. When 
the need arose he would be called for. 

Mr. Wilson told his story from the earliest 
days to the present time. He narrates the ar- 
rival of the first colonists, and passes to that 
historical day in April, 1889, when the last 
piece of virgin soil was opened up to the last 
of the pioneers, who, camped with horses and 
wagons, waited behind the line of sentinels. 
On April 9th, at noon, to the sound of the 
bugle, the barriers were taken away, and a 
rough crowd flung itself across the last open 
spaces. In the morning Oklahoma had been 
a desert. Now it had become a state in the 
powerful Union. Nothing remained to con- 



Essayist and Historian, 1890-1902 63 

quer in the interior of the New World. About 
the same period the United States, teeming 
with population, commenced to overflow and 
to ebb towards the old worlds. Mr. Wilson 
touched upon the opening history of this new 
phase, Hawaii annexed, Spain turned out of a 
still remaining possession, the Philippines oc- 
cupied. Mr. Wilson enumerated these con- 
quests, and enumerated them soberly. His 
story has no imperialistic tone, but it is deeply 
and strongly nationalistic. It reflects the tone 
of a statesman who knows history and does not 
shrink from new destinies. 

''Of a sudden, as it seemed, and without pre- 
meditation, the United States had turned away 
from their long-time, deliberate absorption in 
their own domestic development, from the pol- 
icy professed by every generation of their 
statesmen from the first, of separation from 
the embarrassing entanglements of foreign af- 
fairs; had given themselves a colonial empire, 
and taken their place of power in the field of 
international politics. No one who justly stud- 
ied the course of their life could reasonably 
wonder at the thing that had happened. No 
doubt it had come about without premedita- 
tion. There had been no thought, when this 
war came, of sweeping the Spanish islands of 
far-away seas within the sovereignty of the 



64 President Wilson 

United States. But Spain's empire had proved 
a house of cards. When the American power 
touched it it fell to pieces. The government 
of Spain's colonies had everywhere failed and 
gone to hopeless decay. It would have been 
impossible, it would have been intolerable, to 
set it up again where it had collapsed. A 
quick instinct apprised American statesmen 
that they had come to a turning point in the 
progress of the nation. ... It had turned 
from developing its own resources to make con- 
quest of the markets of the world. . . . The 
spaces of their own continent were occupied 
and reduced to the uses of civilisation; they 
had no frontiers ''to satisfy the feet of the 
young men" ; these new frontiers in the Indies 
and in the far Pacific came to them as if out 
of the very necessity of the new career set be- 
fore them. It was significant how uncritically 
the people accepted the unlooked for conse- 
quences of the war, with what naive enthusi- 
asm they hailed the conquests of their fleet and 
armies.'* 



Ill — The PrcMdency of Princeton 

IN 1902 Mr. Wilson was forty-five years 
of age. He was professor at Princeton 
University. He was neither a member 
of the House of Representatives nor a 
Senator. He had made no tentatives in this di- 
rection, had no ambition or aim in sight. Yet 
in ten years he was to be elected President of 
the Republic of the United States. How was 
such a thing possible? How did he manage 
it? A Frenchman, knowing only the methods 
of the French democracy, finds more here than 
he can easily explain or understand. 

In France politics are actually a profession, 
requiring youthful apprenticeship and the 
w^hole devotion of a life. The politician ad- 
vances from one step to another, and our presi- 
dents ( save one. Marshal MacMahon, who was 
from every point of view an exception) have 
constantly been parliamentary old stagers. It 
is not the same with the American presidents. 
Parliamentary influence is exercised in their 
election, and with much force, but it does not 
determine or dominate it. The president is 
named by the people, and the popularity of the 

65 



66 President Wilson 

parliamentarians is not so great, nor is their 
prestige so high, that they are able to impose 
upon the masses their own choice. In the 
States the political parties are well organised 
and very strong. They select the candidates. 
And often, in order to increase their chances of 
success, they avoid picking out exhausted pro- 
fessional politicians, and, going outside the cir- 
cle, seek men of repute and respect, new names 
which are likely to appeal to the voters. We 
are speaking here more particularly of the 
presidential candidates, but the same remarks 
apply to the governorships of the states. Each 
of the forty-eight states forming as a whole 
the United States is free within its own bor- 
ders and able to elect its own Governor. 
State Governors and President of the Repub- 
lic are both important and eminent offices em- 
bracing political functions which escape the 
personal influences of the politicians, and thus 
enable university professors, soldiers, and even 
leaders of industry to entertain high political 
hopes. If this position is not at once under- 
stood it is not possible to understand the course 
Mr. Wilson has taken in his career. 

In 1902 the Presidency of Princeton Uni- 
versity was vacant. The presidency of a uni- 
versity is an office to which we can offer no 
analogy. The New World astonishes us at 



The Presidency of Princeton 67 

every fresh step. The American universities 
are great free corporations uncontrolled by 
uniform laws. They make their own laws, 
and are self-governing. Their existence is like 
that of a financial company or an industrial 
trust. They have rich patrons who give them 
money and are in some respects the owners of 
the stock of the business. These patrons and 
protectors form a council which nominates a 
head. He is the president of the university. 
According to American tradition he is allowed 
great power, because many of the patrons, be- 
ing men of business, know that one condition 
of success is the Hberty and responsibility of 
the directing head. A President of Univer- 
sity, educator of five or six thousand youths, 
master of a royal domain, of schools, muse- 
ums, and lands, exercises a kind of intellectual 
magistrature which renders him comparable to 
the bishops of an older Europe. We have al- 
ready referred to the prestige enjoyed by the 
professors of a university. The president 
finds himself in a truly eminent position. He 
has the right — almost the duty — to give an 
opinion upon all the moral and intellectual 
questions which occupy the country. "No per- 
sons in the country," wrote Bryce in his work 
upon the United States, "hardly even the great- 
est railway magnates, are better known, and 



68 President Wilson 

certainly none are more respected, than the 
presidents of the leading universities, Harvard, 
Yale, Cornell, or Princeton. . . .'* 

What president were the administrators of 
Princeton going to elect ? Until then the con- 
stant tradition had been to choose a reverend 
pastor of the Presbyterian Church. Amongst 
its faculties the University included a theolog- 
ical school. As it educated the clergy it 
seemed proper to continue as a whole under re- 
ligious influence. However, the temptation 
was great to select this Professor Wilson, who 
had much authority over his pupils, and who 
had also acquired by diverse means a strong 
hold upon the public. Professor Wilson did 
not allure, but he attracted. He had few 
friends — it might even be said that he was not 
personally known. But he had some admir- 
ers. Though distant in manner he was not 
unsociable. His tall figure, which lacked 
neither dignity nor ease, appeared at various 
gatherings. He knew how to be amiable with 
women, had indeed a taste for amiability in that 
respect, for their conversation alone was sought 
by him. In everything he understood he gave 
constantly an impression of at least perfect ca- 
pacity if not of high superiority. He was will- 
ing to accept the appointment. He obtained 



The Presidency of Princeton 69 

it, and became President of Princeton Univer- 
sity. 

Upon entering office he delivered an inaug- 
ural address, in which he defined the task of a 
university : 

**The college is not for the majority who 
carry forward the common labour of the world, 
nor even for those who work at the skilled 
handicrafts which multiply the conveniences 
and the luxuries of the complex modern life. 
It is for the minority who plan, who conceive, 
who superintend, who mediate between group 
and group, and who must see the wide stage as 
a whole. Democratic nations must be served 
in this wise no less than those whose leaders 
are chosen by birth and privilege ; and the col- 
lege is no less democratic because it is for those 
who play a special part. . . . 

*There are two ways of preparing a young 
man for his life work. One is to give him the 
skill and special knowledge which shall make 
a good tool, an excellent bread-winning tool, 
of him; and for thousands of young men that 
way must be followed. It is a good way. It 
is honourable. It is indispensable. But it is 
not for the college, and it can never be. The 
college should seek to make the men whom it 
receives something more than excellent serv- 
ants of a trade or skilled practitioners of a 



70 President Wilson 

profession. It should give them elasticity of 
faculty and breadth of vision, so that they 
shall have a surplus of mind to expend, not 
upon their profession only, for its liberalisa- 
tion and enlargement, but also upon the broader 
interests which lie about them, in the spheres 
in which they are to be, not breadwinners 
merely, but citizens as well, and in their own 
hearts, where they are to grow to the stature 
of real nobility. It is this free capital of mind 
the world most stands in need of, — this free 
capital that awaits investment in undertak- 
ings, spiritual as well as material, which ad- 
vance the race and help all men to a better 
life/' 

To discipline, to form, to enlarge the mind — 
such is the task of a university. And, in the 
opinion of Mr. Wilson, there is no better in- 
strument for this task than the classical lan- 
guages of antiquity. 

"They are disciplinary only because of their 
definiteness and their established method; and 
they take their determinateness from their age 
and perfection. It is their age and complete- 
ness that render them so serviceable and so 
suitable for the first processes of education. 
By this means the boy is informed of the bodies 
of knowledge which are not experimental but 
settled, definite, fundamental. This is the 



The Presidency of Princeton 71 

stock upon which time out of mind all the 
thoughtful world has traded. These have been 
food of the mind for long generations. . . .* 

"Drill in mathematics stands in the same 
category with familiar knowledge of the 
thought and speech of classical antiquity, be- 
cause in them also we get the life-long ac- 
cepted discipline of the race. . . . Here, too, 
as in the classics, is a definitive body of knowl- 
edge and of reason, a discipline which has 
been made test of through long generations, a 
method of thought which has in all ages 
steadied, perfected, enlarged, strengthened, 
and given precision to the powers of the mind. 
Mathematical drill is an introduction of the 
boy's mind to the most definitely settled ra- 
tional experience of the world." 

Such were his general ideas, and Mr. Wil- 
son knew how to draw the moral. He opened 
his work, and commenced to exercise for the 
first time that extraordinary faculty for pro- 

*Mr. Wilson never loses an occasion to assert his faith 
in the educative value of the classics. The Outlook, for 
June 13, 1917, gives an account of a conference held at 
Princeton on the place of the classics in a liberal education. 
Messrs. Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson sent messages to the 
conference in favour of classical studies. "We must not 
reject," wrote the President, "the wisdom of which we are the 
heirs, and seek our fortunes with the slender baggage we 
have accumulated. We ought rather, as much as we are 
able, to insist upon an intimate knowledge of the classics." 



72 President Wilson 

ducing reforms which characterises all his ac- 
tivities. 

Princeton University had serious need of 
being taken in hand. Discipline w^as vacillat- 
ing, and study feeble. Mr. Wilson looked into 
everything. His first care was the examina- 
tions, which he made more severe. He got rid 
of the incapables. This was but the begin- 
ning. He then occupied himself with the 
courses of study, which were revised in a dras- 
tic manner. The modernists in the university 
had suppressed the obligatory subjects of clas- 
sics and mathematics. They had introduced 
an optional system which gave the young men 
the liberty to follow agreeable and easy 
courses. Before they were twenty years old 
they were asked to make a most difficult choice. 
Mr. Wilson reformed this system. ''No doubt 
we must make choice among them, and suffer 
the pupil himself to make choice," he said in 
his inaugural address. ''But the choice that 
we make must be the chief choice, the choice 
the pupil makes the subordinate choice. We 
must supply the synthesis and must see to it 
that, whatever group of studies the student 
selects, it shall at least represent the round 
whole, and contain all the elements of modern 
knowledge.'' He outlined his views, and had 
them adopted. Neglecting the details, his sys- 



The Presidency of Princeton 73 

tern may be summarily stated that each stu- 
dent had to take at least five courses of study, 
two obligatory and three within his personal 
selection. 

But the best programmes are of little avail 
if the methods of work are defective. Mr. 
Wilson reformed these methods. The young 
men sat at the lectures from two to three hours 
a day. They were then left to their own de- 
vices, to reading, to sport. They were not 
guided, and had contact with their teachers 
only during the short and not very effective 
lectures. Mr. Wilson proposed a new system, 
the creation of little groups of students in asso- 
ciation with a tutor or assistant master who 
would direct the work by regular conversa- 
tions, by common research after the manner 
of the German universities. 'Tf we could get 
a body of such tutors at Princeton," he said, 
*'we could transform the place from a place 
w^here there are youngsters doing tasks to a 
place where there are men doing thinking, men 
who are conversing about the things of 
thought, men who are eager and interested in 
the things of thought." Mr. Wilson under- 
took to form such a body, and succeeded. He 
recruited a hundred distinguished and ad- 
vanced scholars and installed them in his Uni- 
versity. He looked for them himself, and 



74 President Wilson 

found them in the United States and in Eng- 
land. Two came from France, and two from 
Germany. 

The best method of work is valueless if con- 
centration is lacking and application absent. 
Mr. Wilson's project was a radical reform, 
which he introduced little by little. 'Tf to seek 
to go to the root is to be a radical, a radical I 
am," he said one day with force. He soon 
proved it. The Princeton students lived dis- 
persed in the lodgings and boarding houses of 
the neighbourhood. Men of the first and sec- 
ond years formed themselves into very exclu- 
sive and jealous circles. American society, 
with its slight equality, tends to assume this 
attitude. Men of the third and fourth years, 
or at least a proportion of them, a chosen 
prime, lived in magnificently fitted clubs. Mr. 
Wilson decided that students of the first and 
second years should re-enter the university 
buildings to live there in fellowship with their 
tutors according to the plan followed at Oxford 
and Cambridge. The change ^^^as considerable, 
and he succeeded in making it. 

His reforming ambitions were not yet satis- 
fied. He wished to go farther, always far- 
ther, and to insist upon the whole of the stu- 
dents — those of the third and fourth years as 
well as those of the first and second — return- 



The Presidency of Princeton 75 

ing to the university establishments. This en- 
tailed the diminution and suppression of these 
great clubs, so rich and proud, and strong in 
many friendships. Their existence troubled 
his authoritative spirit which sought for unity. 
Without a doubt it offended some old puritan 
inclination toward equality which existed in 
his character. From the day he took the presi- 
dency of Princeton in hand (asserts his biog- 
rapher. Air. H. Wilson Harris) he had pre- 
meditated the destruction of these clubs. ''The 
colleges of this country must be reconstructed 
from top to bottom, and America is going to 
demand it.'' 

Did he speak as a university professor or as 
a magistrate? It is a new voice, a magistral 
voice, and beneath the President of Princeton 
appears the future President of the United 
States. In 1906, when he spoke in this manner, 
Mr. Wilson was considering for the first time 
with real precision the career in front of him. 
In 1909 President Roosevelt's term of office 
expired, and his successor would be designated 
in 1908. Mr. Wilson asked himself if he could 
not be this successor, and prepared his candi- 
dature. It was an early experiment, for Mr. 
Wilson soon recognised that the Democratic 
party, to which he belonged, would again pro- 
pose the popular orator Bryan. He waited. 



76 President Wilson 

But there awoke in him an agitating strain 
which could be extinguished no longer, and 
which was little in tune with his characteristic 
university prudence and caution. This feeling 
was one of vehemence and passion, which 
seemed to come to him from a larger, freer ex- 
istence. American public life was disturbed 
at that moment. Animated by the petulance 
of speeches against plutocracy. President 
Roosevelt excited and set fire to the national 
soul. This must be remembered in order to 
understand Mr. Wilson's ardent initiatives 
within his university. 

i\Ir. Wilson prepared his reforms in silence. 
This is a custom from which he has never de- 
parted. When he takes counsel it is in secret. 
In June, 1907, he read to his administrative 
board a scheme of total reconstruction of the 
old university. New buildings were to be 
erected to correspond to the needs of a new 
organisation. All the students would live with 
their tutors under the same roof. The au- 
thority of his office, together with that of his 
personality, were such that the board adopted 
the project at once. But soon it became public, 
and opposition became manifest. There was a 
cry of indignation. The older members, those 
alumni, whose gifts had given life to the Uni- 
versity, did not wish the clubs in which they 



The Presidency of Princeton 77 



had once lived, and which now sheltered their 
sons, to be touched. Many approached the ad- 
ministrative body. Others announced their in- 
tention of withdrawing their financial aid. 
The board could not resist the clamour. In 
October they asked their President to with- 
draw his scheme. Mr. Wilson was obliged to 
consent. But he specifically stated that he re- 
tained his views, and that he would not cease 
to fight his opponents. "It was then that I 
met Wall Street for the first time," he is re- 
ported as saying in conversation. ''And I saw 
for myself the manner in which Wall Street 
opposes everything that is attempted for the 
good of the country." 

Leaving for an instant a fight by no means 
ended, we will turn to a book, produced in a 
most elegant typographical form, which j\Ir. 
Wilson published in 1908. He entitled it 'The 
Free Life," and the contents are a farewell 
with last wishes that Mr. Wilson addressed to 
the young men who quitted Princeton after 
four years of study. This adieu is in the form 
of a sermon. Such is the tradition of the place, 
he observed, and its observance is easy to him. 
As a child he had often listened to his father's 
preaching. At once he announces his text: 
"And be not conformed to this world: but be 



78 President Wilson 

ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, 
that ye may prove what is that good, and ac- 
ceptable, and perfect will of God." (Romans 
xii:2.) A mystical text, impregnated with the 
spirit of St. Paul, which is the very spirit of 
Christian protestantism. ''Be not conformed." 
. . . These churches, which in the face of the 
Anglican church have heard and remembered 
these words, retain them as their title of no- 
bility. They maintain a spirit of separation, 
of Christian protestation, and recognise each 
other as sisters by their common characteristic 
— nonconformity. *'Be not conformed. . . ." 
This is the advice Mr. Wilson gives to these 
young men. They must listen to themselves, 
remain faithful to themselves. 

'Tt is not a thing remote, obscure, poetical, 
but a very real thing, that lives in the con- 
sciousness of every one of us. Every thought- 
ful man, every man not merely of vagrant 
mind, has been aware, not once, but many 
times, of some unconquerable spirit that he 
calls himself, which is struggling against being 
overborne by circumstances, against being 
forced into conformity with things his heart is 
not in, things which seem to deaden him and 
deprive him of his natural independence and 
integrity, so that his individuality is lost and 
merged into some common, indistinguishable 



The Prcffidency of Princeton 79 

mass, the nameless multitudes of a world that 
ceaselessly shifts and alters and is never twice 
the same. He feels instinctively that the only 
victory lies in nonconformity. He must ad- 
just himself to these things that come and go 
and have no base or principle, but he must not 
be subdued by them or lose his own clear lines 
of chosen action." 

"Be not conformed. ... Be yourselves. . . ." 
We know the formula, and many others which 
spring from it. They are old, and, to their age 
and the abundance of deeds they suggest, they 
owe an extreme malleability. Ibsen has drawn 
from them anarchistic morals. Mr. Wilson 
makes use of them to teach a very different 
moral. This descendant of the puritans, living 
in the magnificent establishment over which he 
presides, amongst classical buildings, shelter- 
ing groves, soft resting places, amidst the si- 
lence and the luxury of an American univer- 
sity, cannot shut his eyes to the moral. "Be 
not conformed to the world, to the usages of 
the world . . .'' he says to the young men on 
the point of departure. He speaks to them not 
as a mystic but as a scholar. The world he 
warns these youths to be careful of is New 
York and Wall Street; the worlds of politics, 
finance, industry, the saloons, the party, the 
dub. It is the whole secular world. "Be ye 



80 President Wilson 

transformed by the renewing of your mind/' 
he cries. The views of a great scholar, of a 
great teacher, are worthy of attention. Renew 
your minds. What Wilson meant was : do not 
forget the four years you terminate to-day, and 
that you have been living in familiarity with 
thought and the eternal. 

^Tor four years you have been given an op- 
portunity to get the offing and perspective of 
books, of the truths which are of no age, but 
run unbroken and unaltered throughout the 
changeful life of all ages. You know the long 
measurements, the high laws by which the 
world's progress has ever been gauged and as- 
sessed, — laws of sound thinking and pure mo- 
tive which seem to lie apart in calm regions 
which passion cannot disturb, into whose pure 
air wander no mists or confusions or threats 
of storm. Amidst every altered aspect of time 
and circumstance the human heart has re- 
mained unchanged. No doubt there were sim- 
pler ages, when the things which now perplex 
us in hope and conduct seemed very plain. If 
life confuses us now, no doubt it is because we 
do not see it simply and see it whole. Look 
back more often, and you shall find your vision 
adjusted for the look ahead.'' 

It is not the appeal of an apostle, but the ad- 
vice of a wise platonist. The apostle never 



The Preddency of Princeton 81 

said: ''Look behind, consult the eternal experi- 
ence." He did say: "Look towards God, fol- 
low the revelation of the absolute." But the 
Anglo-Saxon spirit is clever to adapt itself to 
all things, to give heed to them, and to utilise 
them to the best purpose. The Anglo-Saxon 
spirit is practical, and makes everything serve 
its purpose. "Reflections like these [wrote 
Mr. Wilson] seem to spring naturally to the 
thought out of the words of Scripture counsel 
I have read." And his discourse goes on, con- 
tinuing serenely to combine a platonistic para- 
phrase with an evangelical text. Transform 
your minds, he says; transform them by knowl- 
edge. Knowledge gives eternal youth. Trans- 
form them by friendship. Friendship is a 
royal gift, and the nobility of the soul. Knowl- 
edge and Friendship are to be found in the 
university. 

*The transformed university man, whose 
thought and will have been in fact renewed 
out of the sources of knowledge and of love, is 
one of the great dynamic forces of the world. 
We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewil- 
dered. . . . There are many voices of counsel, 
but few voices of wisdom; there is much ex- 
citement and feverish activity, but little con- 
cert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed 
by our own ungoverned, undirected energies, 



82 President Wilson 

and do many things but nothing long. It is 
our duty to find ourselves. It is our privilege 
to be calm and know that the truth has not 
changed, that old wisdom is more to be desired 
than any new nostrum, that we must neither 
run with the crowd nor deride it, but seek sober 
counsel for it and for ourselves.'' 

We shall not hear this language long. The 
University will disappear before politics and 
the magistrature. On March 9, 1909, Mr. 
Wilson spoke at the annual banquet of the 
Civic League of St. Louis. *'The older I be- 
come [he said] the less and less fit I am to 
speak at banquets for I become more and more 
serious. I consider some of my friends with a 
hopeless envy. They are so measured in tone, 
so cold. Their judgments are always so sepa- 
rate from the active movements which animate 
them. As for myself, the older I become, the 
more I become ardent. . . ." This was evident 
at Princeton where the old combat was still un- 
extinguished. 

It became public. The New York journals 
commented upon it, and polemics commenced 
to which Mr. Wilson did not seem to be a 
stranger. The conflict at last assumed the 
singular form of a kind of duel between an 
isolated leader, almost at variance with his ad- 



The Presidency of Princeton 83 

ministrative board, and some millionaire pa- 
trons. In 1909 a gift of 250,000 dollars was 
offered to the University upon the condition 
that the sum should be expended upon the con- 
struction of a graduate school. The question 
arose as to the plans of the proposed school. 
Mr. Wilson still adhered to his old scheme, 
which had been adjourned but not rejected. 
Certain of the terms specified by the donor he 
considered contrary to his own ideas, and he 
asked that the gift be refused. "When the 
country is looking to us as men who prefer 
ideas even to money," he asked, ''are we going 
to withdraw and say, 'After all, we find we 
were mistaken: we prefer money to ideas'?** 
He came into collision with a very lively oppo- 
sition, and triumphed. The gift was refused. 
His victory did not last long. Hardly had 
he disembarrassed himself of this offer of a 
quarter of a million dollars than a new offer 
of 3,000,000 dollars was thrown at him. Im- 
mediately the rejected quarter of a million was 
brought into the charge, and the gift again 
tendered. There were too many millions! 
Mr. Wilson gave way beneath the burden, and 
prepared to quit this presidency where he was 
at last conquered. But the defeat was not a 
humiliation, and, unharmed, he carried his 
ideas elsewhere. 



IV — The Government of New Jersey 



WITHOUT a doubt Mr. Wilson con- 
sidered from this time the possi- 
bility of becoming President of 
the United States. Perhaps we 
may take as a kind of programme the inter- 
esting addresses he delivered in 1907, and pub- 
lished in May, 1908 (a few months before 
the presidential election of Mr. Taft), upon 
^'Constitutional Government in the United 
States." These vigorous and concise lectures 
have a double interest. They give an excellent 
outline of the American political organisation, 
and also form a masterly exposition of the 
ideas of the man who was soon to direct this 
organisation with all the strength of his will. 
These lectures present us with a sort of new 
edition, very virile and ripened, of the youth- 
ful ^'Congressional Government." In both 
books Mr. Wilson examines the House of 
Representatives, the Senate, the Courts of Jus- 
tice, the Presidency, the Parties, what they 
are, and the manner in which they work. He 
concerns himself less with the written law and 
more with the actual practice. He interests 

84 



The Government of New Jersey 85 



himself greatly in what is, but still more so in 
what is preparing, and what is going to be. 
An ardent and reforming zeal incites his ob- 
servations. A political constitution, he tells 
us, is not a machine put together once for all, 
the subject of a definition or a mathematical 
demonstration. A political constitution is a 
living thing, and its study must be approached 
not in a mathematical or Newtonian spirit, as 
did the old theorists of the eighteenth century, 
but in a vital and Darwinian spirit, with a con- 
stant care to disclose the parts which are hid- 
den, those which strengthen, those which 
modify. ''Constitutions," he said loftily, "are 
what politicians make them." But there exists 
in the constitution of the United States one 
part which ought to be strong. This is the 
Presidency. Cleveland commenced an evolu- 
tion which Roosevelt continued. The Presi- 
dents of the nineteenth century selected their 
ministers from amongst the more eminent poli- 
ticians. Cleveland at first, and then Roosevelt 
following, changed the practice. They consid- 
ered that the ministers grouped round the 
President should form a body of personal ad- 
visers, and that the President was in a posi- 
tion to pick them from amongst those who pos- 
sessed his personal confidence and whose ad- 
vice he preferred. Cleveland at first, and then 



86 President Wilson 

Roosevelt, wished to bring into association men 
whose power of work had been proved not only 
in public but also in private life, as, for in- 
stance, bankers who had never sat upon the 
committee of any political party, lawyers who 
had stood aside from politics, administrators 
who had succeeded in the direction of public 
services. Their attitude was as if the Presi- 
dent alone had a public function, the ministers 
being but privy councillors, the collaborators 
of his choice. 

This was not the only modification which in- 
creased the presidential office. Everything 
seemed concurrently to further its aggrandise- 
ment. The increasing difficulty and complica- 
tion of foreign affairs, in which the President 
possesses almost quasi-sovereign powers, gave 
him in the eyes of the world the figure of lead- 
ership. His messages to Congress, in the old 
days very rare and quite unheeded, now be- 
came through this prestige most important 
documents of great weight with public opin- 
ion. The President thus acquired a power of 
direction and initiative, which, added to the 
right of veto given to him by the Constitution, 
completely armed him. The foundation of his 
power is national assent, and it is limited only 
by this assent. 'The President is at liberty 
[wrote Mr. Wilson] both in law and con- 



2^he Government of New Jersey 87 

science, to be as big a man as he can. His 
capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be 
overborne by him, it will be no fault of the 
makers of the Constitution, — it will be from 
no lack of constitutional powers on its part, 
but only because the President has the nation 
behind him, and Congress has not. He has no 
means of compelling Congress except through 
public opinion." 

One danger threatened the office, a danger 
menacing enough to become overwhelming and 
crushing upon those who held it. It seemed 
that the entire nation fixed its gaze upon their 
President and aw^aited his words. Upon every 
question, no matter what technicality was in- 
volved, military, economic, or legislative, the 
President's knowledge and judgTiient were 
called for. He must know every problem, and 
be able to satisfy every anxiety. ''Men of or- 
dinary physique and discretion [wrote Mr. 
Wilson] cannot be Presidents and live if the 
strain be not somehow relieved. \A^e shall be 
obliged alw^ays to be picking our chief magis- 
trates from among wise and prudent athletes 
— a small class.*' 

However, he was ready. He did not speak 
or make proclamation. He did not needlessly 
advertise his vocation. But it existed and 



88 President Wilson 

pressed him forward, and was not likely to 
disappear. He conducted himself like a ''wise 
and prudent athlete/' and planned his life se- 
dately. His time as a University President 
had not been lost. He had acquired a useful 
celebrity as a radical Democrat. He entered 
actively into political conflicts, and the fight 
he had had with his administrative board had 
rendered him popular. What would be his 
next step? We are at the beginning of the 
summer of 191 o. At Princeton the conserva- 
tive coalition, the plutocratic alumni, had been 
victorious. Mr. Wilson had to seek occupa- 
tion elsewhere. The presidential election was 
timed for 1912. Would Mr. Wilson stand as 
a candidate? Possibly. Mr. Taft, the then 
President, was a capable and honest official 
who lacked strength. He most certainly would 
not be re-elected. Undoubtedly Mr. Roose- 
velt would present himself. What chance had 
he of election? His interesting and oscillating 
personality occupied public opinion and lent 
animation to the scene, but did not carry con- 
viction. Mr. Roosevelt was a brilliant politi- 
cal adventurer, and could be engaged in the 
fight without rashness. Mr. Bryan, the Demo- 
crat, already twice a candidate and twice de- 
feated, seemed hardly destined for success. 
There were fine chances for a new man, and 



The Government of New Jersey 89 

we do not doubt that Mr. Wilson took them 
into his calculation. Nevertheless there were 
two years to run. They had to be employed 
usefully and with some striking result. The 
Governorship of New Jersey was about to be- 
come vacant, the election taking place in No- 
vember, 1910, the candidates being selected in 
September. Mr. Wilson decided to make the 
experiment and become known as a Governor. 
''Undoubtedly," WTote his friend and biog- 
rapher, Mr. Henry Jones Ford, ''the movement 
which carried him from the Presidency of 
Princeton to the Governorship of New Jersey 
had for its aim the Presidency of the nation." 

What is a State Governor? The French 
reader needs some explanation of the nature 
of his duties. The Republic of the United 
States is actually an old and permanent union 
of states. When they federated in 1775 to 
fight England there were thirteen. To-day 
there are forty-eight, and each exists as a 
State. Each one has its own name ; its consti- 
tution as formulated by the first colonists and 
reformed by the inhabitants at their pleasure; 
its civil and criminal code ; its fiscal legislation, 
and its working powers. It has its first and 
second Houses, and a Governor elected for 
two, three, or four years. The functions of a 
Governor are much the same, although on a 



90 President Wilson 

smaller scale, to those fulfilled in the eyes of 
the world by the President of the United 
States. The promotion from one office to the 
other is natural and reasonable. In these later 
years there appears to be a growing tradition 
which inclines the American electors to select 
their federal President from amongst their 
forty-eight Governors. Mr. Roosevelt was 
Governor before becoming President. The 
precedent was good. Mr. Wilson decided to 
attempt in the Governorship of New Jersey the 
last trial and the last proof of his strength. 

The Government of New Jersey is very im- 
portant. A neighbour to New York, which it 
adjoins, its activity is inextricably mixed with 
that of the Atlantic capital. New York is built 
at the mouth of a wide river, the Hudson. It 
occupies one shore on one side of the estuary. 
New Jersey occupies the other. In reality they 
form the same city, separated by the historical 
hazard of a frontier. But this chance made 
a lot of difference. The legal control of finan- 
cial corporations was not the same in New 
York as in Jersey City, less rigid in one, sterner 
in the other. The financial corporations and 
trusts knew very well how to avail themselves 
of so accommodating a neighbour. They 
crossed the river, registered themselves in Jer- 



I 



The Gofcernment of New Jersey 91 



sey City, and were troubled no more. The 
democratic politicians, who were masters in 
New Jersey, acted in connivance with the trusts 
and benefited from the hospitality asked of 
them. The benefit was unfortunate and low- 
ered the entire political morality of the State. 
It was generally recognised that this morality 
was deplorable, and that the House, the offices, 
and the committees of the State of New Jer- 
sey were what we call in France ''cavernes." 
Into these dens Mr. ^^'ilson, a university 
man of upright but distant nature, was about 
to enter as master. How could it be possible? 
In many parts of the old world we have these 
''cavernes," these dens of brigands. But the 
occupants know well how to guard their gates. 
They refuse admittance to any one likely to 
disturb them. And if, by any chance, an un- 
sympathetic being does slip in they eliminate 
him by a wise quarantine. Have their Ameri- 
can friends of the same type less prudence? 
No one will believe it. The difference of the 
political machine explains the difference be- 
tween the possibilities of American and Con- 
tinental parliamentarism. In America the 
heads of the executive power, the Governors 
or the President, are elected by universal suf- 
frage. The politicians are very united and 
very strong. Our political committees do not 



92 President Wilson 

equal their redoubtable machines which are in 
sovereign control of offices and favours. But 
with both Governors or President there is a 
great protection every three or four years 
which we lack, and which helps to balance the 
occult powers. The people, directly consulted, 
selects its Governors and its Representatives. 
This public appeal is a sudden burst of light 
and air. . . . We will not exaggerate. The 
politicians, committees, and their chairmen, 
what are known as "the machines and their 
bosses,'' play cautiously. They know how to 
reduce the efficacy of the appeal for protection, 
to pass the air and the light through a fine 
sieve. However, the process gives them trou- 
ble, and the result is not certain. They do not 
love the recurrence of these *'Great Days'' 
when the people name their leaders. They 
elude the verdict by manoeuvres. One consists 
of hiding themselves behind a candidate who 
is not a professional politician. They choose 
a man capable of pleasing and likely to succeed 
by the novelty of his name, by a prestige ac- 
quired elsewhere amidst surroundings not dis- 
credited, a university chair or a court of jus- 
tice, a man in fact of the type of Mr. Wilson 
who can be tempted by the brilliancy of high 
office. The politicians, who adopt him and 
push his candidature, count upon the inexperi- 



The Gtyvernment of New Jersey 93 

ence of this newcomer, and on their knowledge 
of the world, to reduce him to impotency on the 
morrow of his election. They then are able to 
govern as they governed before. The situa- 
tion is false. People, politicians, and candi- 
dates try hard to extract advantage from it. 
'The trouble with our present political condi- 
tion [wrote President Wilson in "The New 
Freedom''] is that we need some man who has 
not been associated with the governing classes 
and the governing influences of this country to 
stand up and speak for us; we need to hear a 
voice from the outside calling upon the Ameri- 
can people to assert again their rights and pre- 
rogatives in the possession of their ow^n gov- 
ernment.'' 

The political ''bosses" of New Jersey had 
every reason to be confident. Their moral dis- 
credit was an old and established fact. They 
had been many times denounced and attacked 
by very active and valorous civic leagues. 
They had always so well known how to defend 
their power that their adversaries were dis- 
couraged and the honest men of the State re- 
duced to inertia. Mr. Wilson's ardour and elo- 
quence were recognised. These qualities they 
judged would make him a good advocate. 
They did not forget his intellectual past and 
his ineffectual effort to dominate the adminis- 



94 President Wilson 

trative board of Princeton University. This 
misadventure foretold a Governor easy to man- 
age. Voluntarily they adopted him. The 
''boss" of the democratic party, a certain James 
Smith who was very discredited, consented to 
retire, and promised that he would renounce 
the representation of the State of New Jersey 
in the Senate of the United States. It was 
arranged that the brilliant "outsider" from the 
University, the stranger candidate, should be 
given every freedom, and should receive every 
promise necessary for his success. 

In the meanwhile Mr. Wilson did not inter- 
rupt his dignified professorial existence. He 
w^as playing golf on the links of Princeton 
when a messenger announced that his candi- 
dature was decidedly acceptable to the Demo- 
crats of New Jersey who were at that moment 
sitting in party convention. The convention, 
which had acclaimed his name, wished to hear 
him speak. The messengers with these tidings 
carried off Mr. Wilson in their auto, covered 
eleven miles in half an hour, and placed him on 
the platform where he opened his public career. 
He spoke clearly and with a skill which must 
have given rise to thought amongst the politi- 
cal old stagers who had just heard his name. 
He did not waste his time in empty thanks, but 
made it publicly clear that he had been named 



The Govenwient of New Jersey 95 

candidate of the democratic party without so- 
licitation or engagement on his side, and that 
consequently he would be wholly free, if elected 
Governor, to serve the people and the State 
with entire independence. And he set forth 
his programme. 

"Above all the issues there are three which 
demand our particular attention; first, the 
business-like and economical administration of 
the business of the State; second, equalisation 
of taxes; and third, control of corporations. 
There are other important questions that con- 
front us, as they confront all the other States 
of the Union in this day of readjustment, like 
the matter of corrupt practices in elections, 
liability of employers and conservation. But 
the three I have mentioned will dominate the 
rest. It is imperative that we should not only 
master them, but also act upon them, and act 
very definitely. 

''The question of the control of corporations 
is a very difficult one, upon which no man can 
speak with confidence. But some things are 
plain. It is plain, so far as New Jersey is con- 
cerned, that we must have a public service com- 
mission with the amplest powers to oversee and 
regulate the administration of public service 
corporations throughout the State. . . . The 
regulation of corporations is the duty of the 



96 President Wilson 

State much more directly than it is the duty of 
the Government of the United States. It is my 
strong hope that New Jersey may lead the way 
in reform by scrutinising very carefully the 
enterprises she consents to incorporate: their 
make-up, their objects, the basis and method of 
their capitalisation, their organisation with re- 
spect to liability to control by the State, their 
conformity to state and federal statutes. This 
can be done, and done effectually. I covet for 
New Jersey the honour of doing it." 

This clear speech was the first of a vigorous 
and brilliant campaign. Until November 8th, 
day of the election, Mr. Wilson travelled 
through the State, always setting forth his 
independence and his plans. Publicly interro- 
gated by the members of the civic leagues, he 
replied to them without concealment. 

"You ask me what I think of our political 
system, of our committees, and their leaders. 
I have made it my business for years to ob- 
serve and understand that system, and I hate 
It as thoroughly as I understand it. You are 
quite right in saying that the system is bi-par- 
tisan; that it constitutes 'the most dangerous 
condition in the public life of our State and 
nation to-day'; and that it has virtually, for 
the time being, 'destroyed representative gov- 
ernment, and put in its place a government of 



The Gaoernrnent of New Jersey 97 

privilege/ I would propose to abolish It by the 
above reforms, by the election to office of men 
who will refuse to submit to it, and bend all 
their energies to break it up, and by pitiless 
publicity." 

He was asked what his relations would be 
with his own party managers. He replied: 
"I would consider, if I am elected, that I am 
myself the head of my party, and the direct 
representative of the whole people in the con- 
duct of the government/' 

Mr. Wilson was elected. He had a majority 
of 50,000 votes, replacing a Republican who 
had been elected with a majority of 80,000. 
His campaign had displaced and gained 130,- 
000 votes. The elections to the legislature, 
which had taken place at the same time, had 
equally favoured the democratic party to 
which he belonged. The republican majority 
of 31 on a joint ballot had now become a dem- 
ocratic majority of 21. Nothing more re- 
mained for Mr. Wilson but to prove his author- 
ity and govern as he had promised. 

He did not fail. He had to fight, but the 
battle was short and decisive. We have al- 
ready referred to James Smith, the local poli- 
tician and ''boss," who retired in favour of 
Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson had in fact exacted 
his resigrnatlon. In the convention which had 



98 President Wilson 

proclaimed his candidature, names had been 
discussed for one of the two senatorial seats 
which belonged to the State of New Jersey in 
the federal Senate of the United States. Mr. 
Wilson had requested that James Smith should 
not be nominated, as he did not wish his name 
associated with that of the "boss." His de- 
mand was admitted. A certain James E. Mar- 
tine was selected in the place of Smith, and 
Mr. Wilson believed the matter settled by this 
resignation and selection. He was deceived. 
With indignation he learned that James 
Smith's resignation was simply a trick. On 
the morrow of the electoral success Smith tran- 
quilly declared that there had been a mistake, 
that he had recovered from the illness which 
had attacked him, and that he was the candi- 
date and not Mr. Martine. His political 
friends did not contradict these assertions. 

For an instant Mr. Wilson was surprised by 
the cynicism of the ruse, and by the clumsy re- 
erection of the political machine he had prom- 
ised to control. But he understood that he 
must from that moment either gain or lose his 
party. The position was very difficult. The sen- 
ator, representative of New Jersey at Wash- 
ington, was elected not by universal suffrage 
but by the electoral body, the state legislature 
constituted by members of both Houses, the 



The Government of New Jersey 99 

politicians who had been accustomed to march 
with and follow their ''bosses." Mr. Wilson 
thus found himself surrounded by his adver- 
saries, and in grave danger of being rapidly 
and definitely humiliated. The combat was 
unavoidable, and he accepted the challenge. 
He first addressed himself to James Smith, re- 
minded him of his promise, and called upon 
him to keep it. Mr. James Smith paid no at- 
tention to the demand, and Mr. Wilson imme- 
diately addressed himself to the people. 

''I realise the delicacy of taking any part in 
the discussion of the matter [he said]. As 
Governor of New Jersey I shall have no part 
in the choice of Senator. Legally speaking, it 
is not my duty even to give advice with regard 
to the choice. But there are other duties besides 
legal duties. The recent campaign has put me 
in an unusual position. I offered, if elected, 
to be the political spokesman and advisor of 
the people. I even asked the voters who did 
not care to make their choice of governor upon 
that understanding not to vote for me. I be- 
lieve that the choice was made upon that un- 
derstanding and I cannot escape the responsi- 
bility involved. I have no desire to escape it. 
It is my duty to say, with a full sense of the 
peculiar responsibility of my position, what I 



100 President Wilson 

deem to he the obligation of the legislature to 
do in this gravely important matter" 

We have italicized these words. They ex- 
press the whole sense and essence of what may 
be called the Wilsonian revolution, a revolu- 
tion long meditated and pre-meditated, for we 
have found its definition in the earliest works 
of our author. He had always desired what 
he was able to do that day, to bring together 
Executive and Legislative, artificially sepa- 
rated by the written constitution of the United 
States, to create an authority — a personal au- 
thority — which imposed its will upon the two 
Houses, advising them, leading them, and gov- 
erning them, and telling them what it consid- 
ered should he their duty in serious cases. We 
recall the origin because it is that origin which 
gives significance to the local incident. Trace 
a straight line from the origin to this episode, 
continue the line by an imaginary prolonga- 
tion. This prolongation will show at a not 
very remote point a great fact. In March, 
1917, President Wilson told his people what 
he considered to be their duty in the gravest of 
circumstances, and he launched that people into 
war. But let us return to this State Governor- 
ship in which Mr. Wilson was beginning to 
exercise himself and show his quality. 



The Gaoernment of New Jersey 101 

He had satisfaction of the ''boss" who had 
tried to trick him. Smith was definitely re- 
jected and Martine elected senator. This first 
victory cleared the ground, and rendered al- 
most easy those which followed. Air. Wilson 
took the direction of the legislative work. The 
constitution of the State of New Jersey enacts 
that the Governor ''should communicate with 
the Houses by means of a message at the com- 
mencement of each session, and at such other 
times as he should deem necessary, recom- 
mending to them such measures as he consid- 
ered advisable." This written law produced 
feeble results. Mr. Wilson armed himself with 
the text, and gave fresh life to the function. 
Addressing himself to the members, he told 
them what he expected from them in the name 
of public opinion. The constitution did not 
authorise him to participate in the legislative 
debates, and he had to abstain from them. But 
he participated in the meetings of the demo- 
cratic party of which he considered himself 
the leader at the same time as Governor of the 
State. He was not invited to participate. He 
invited himself, asserting himself, and speak- 
ing with a tenacity and authority which tired 
his adversaries. 

Governor Wilson's legislative work is of 
high interest. But the French reader would 



102 President Wilson 

not be likely to understand it without previous 
explanation. The atmosphere and the prob- 
lems have no analogies in France. Our insti- 
tutions have numerous defects, but they can- 
not be compared with American institutions as 
their character is so different. If we wish to 
understand the politics of the United States of 
America we must remember that this immense 
nation of mixed race — illiterates, streaked with 
Calabrian, Syrian, and Croat blood — is gov- 
erned by laws set up in 1787 by English and 
Scottish colonists under the guidance of a rural 
aristocracy and the cream of Puritan jurists. 
These men organised an ingenious and compli- 
cated system of officials elected to arbitrate 
upon the difficulties which cropped up. They 
took for granted that these difficulties would 
be exceptional and trifling, for their activities 
were dispersed across the vast scattered space 
in which they lived. They thought, and not 
without reason, that these officials could not 
be very numerous. So they decided to name 
them — judges, administrators, militia officers, 
school directors — by the selection of the ballot. 
The old colonists in this way almost succeeded 
in suppressing the State and establishing a free 
republic. The reality is remote, the survivals 
are absurd. An Americanised Bulgarian who 
can scarcely speak English, who cannot write, 



The Government of New Jersey 103 

can nominate, in other words can select each 
year, if he lives in a large town, a hundred of- 
ficials. Illiterate himself he can yet turn the 
wheels of the most difficult political machinery. 
His incapacity is conspicuous. This unhappy 
person must not he crushed, for if he is in- 
capable no one is capable. The most clear- 
headed and careful citizen of an American city 
is overwhelmed by the duties thrust upon him 
by an old-fashioned constitution, by the num- 
ber and frequency of the choice demanded 
from him. Thus arises the power of the com- 
mittee and the politician, the ''machines" and 
the ''bosses." They are the specialists who 
fabricate the lists and manipulate the ballots 
exactly as merchants buy their goods and make 
a market. Mr. Wilson touched upon the sub- 
ject with some force a few months before his 
election in March, 1909, when addressing one 
of the civic leagues which devote themselves to 
studying these problems. 

"You have given the people of this country 
so many persons to select for office that they 
have not time to select them, and have to leave 
it to professionals, that is to say, the profes- 
sional politicians; which, reduced to its sim- 
plest term, is the boss of the district. When 
you vote the republican or democratic ticket 
you either vote for the names selected by one 



104! President Wilson 

machine or the names selected by the other 
machine. This is not to lay any aspersion upon 
those who receive the nominations. I for one 
do not subscribe to the opinion that bosses un- 
der our Government deserve our scorn and 
contempt, for we have organised a system of 
government which makes them just as neces- 
sary as the President of the United States. 
They are the natural, inevitable fruit of the 
tree, and if we do not like them we have got 
to plant another tree. The boss is just as legiti- 
mate as any member of any legislature, be- 
cause by giving the people a task which they 
cannot perform, you have taken it away from 
them, and have made it necessary that those 
who can perform it should perform it. . . .'' 

Under a final analysis the constitution 
proves faulty because it is fictitious, and fic- 
titious because it is out of date. Being obso- 
lete, necessarily it must disappear before occult 
but energetic and actual force. Mr. Wilson 
dealt also with this aspect. 

'What is the moral? I have already said 
it, and said it again, to the students at my 
lectures. To-day, for the first time, I offer it 
to my fellow citizens in conference assembled 
outside the confines of the college. I have for 
a long while deferred the task which appeared 
at first discouraging. The remedy is con- 



The Gm^ernment of New Jersey 105 

tained in one word, Simplification, Simplify 
your processes, and you will begin to control; 
complicate them, and you will get farther and 
farther away from their control. 

"Simplification! Simplification! Simplifica- 
tion ! is the task that awaits us : to reduce the 
number of persons voted for to the absolute 
workable minimum, — knowing whom you have 
selected; knowing whom you have trusted, and 
having so few persons to watch that you can 
watch them. That is the way we are going to 
get popular control back in this country, and 
that is the only way we are going to get popu- 
lar control back. . . . Act in any other man- 
ner — name, for example, new officials ex- 
pressly charged to watch those you have al- 
ready elected, and you will have obtained noth- 
ing but a new weakness in your control." 

Simplification; in other words to level to the 
intelligence of the multitude a constitution 
based upon the political intelligence of a patri- 
archal and highly cultivated society. Simpli- 
fication; to shape to the needs of a modern 
state, weighted with enterprises and responsi- 
bilities, a constitution planned for the needs 
of a primitive state, to arbitrate between the 
citizens rather than to lead the people. Sim- 
plification of electoral procedure, of the mecha- 
nism of control, of the concentration of power. 



106 President Wilson 

To form from the elements of a republican so- 
ciety, founded by eighteenth century Puritan 
colonists, a new, authoritative and popular so- 
ciety, Caesarian in more than one respect. 
This was the task Mr. Wilson defined so 
clearly, a task he attempted within the limited 
scope of his powers. 

At first he wished to reduce the secret influ- 
ences. He wanted to secure the control of the 
political and financial combinations which gov- 
erned under the pretence of a fictitious democ- 
racy. He favoured the passing of a law in- 
sisting upon the publicity of conventions and 
the deliberations of the Parties, and regulat- 
ing the methods by which they selected the 
candidates. There was a lively resistance. 
Dissenting Democrats united with Republicans 
in concerted opposition to defeat the bill. At 
this meeting to which he had not been asked 
Governor Wilson arrived self-invited. He 
spoke for four hours. Overcoming his oppo- 
nents, he secured the necessary support. The 
law was passed. On one hand it increased 
the power of the people, on the other the power 
of the Governor, at the expense of these secret 
committees of the Parties. The Governor was 
given a legal right to assist at those party con- 
ferences which decided upon the programmes. 
This innovation was actively attacked on the 



The Government of New Jersey 107 

ground that the Governor would become a dic- 
tator. ''This is really a powerful argument in 
its favour. We have outgrown the notion that 
the concentration of power necessarily means 
tyranny. The course we ought to pursue is the 
adoption of means for securing the location of 
power in the hands of the most responsible au- 
thority." * 

Mr. Wilson then occupied himself with the 
financial bodies dealing with the public serv- 
ices. They are numerous in the United States, 
where the municipalities do not usually under- 
take such enterprises as the supply of their 
own gas, water, and traction. They are power- 
ful, and constantly intrigue amongst the rep- 
resentatives and parties, seeking friends, se- 
cretly by bribery, publicly by ''propaganda" 
subventions. Mr. Wilson resolved to end this 
traffic by suppressing all relationship between 
the industrial combinations and the members 
of the legislature. He introduced into the 
State of which he was governor a measure 
already passed by other states. He created an 
administrative commission of public services, 
a Public Utilities Commission. The purpose 
of this institution, according to an American 

*The New Stateism, by John M. Mathews, in the North 
American Review, for June, 191 1. 



108 President Wilson 

writer,* was "to divorce all corporate regula- 
tion from politics by taking it out of the hands 
of the Legislature and placing it in the con- 
trol of a small administrative body." Four 
members sat upon this body, with jurisdiction 
over water, gas, telephone, tramway, railway 
and other companies. They had power to in- 
vestigate the actions of these companies, their 
formation, and their financial conditions. The 
responsibility of a few competent and well re- 
munerated men was substituted for that of 
some hundreds of elected representatives. 

Mr. Wilson did not rest until he had finished 
all the reforms inscribed on his programme. 
Public opinion gave him powerful assistance. 
The Legislature could resist no longer. The 
laws of the State of New Jersey imposed many 
meetings upon the municipalities, elected more 
officials than representatives, and all equally 
dependent upon the Parties. Mr. Wilson 
modified this legal framework and gave it 
greater pliancy. New laws were passed au- 
thorising the municipalities to govern them- 
selves according to a more modern view, in 
the shape of commissions elected by direct 
popular vote and presided over by a salaried 
mayor. Twenty-four cities, including Jersey 

* Young : "The New American Government and Its Work,'* 
chap, xviii. 



The Gcyvernment of New Jersey 109 

City, Atlantic City, Trenton, and Hoboken, 
soon took advantage of this arrangement. 

This was not all. Laws were passed which 
repressed electoral corruption, also a law which 
determined the responsibility of masters in re- 
spect to workmen's accidents. . . . He ob- 
tained these results in the short space of a year ; 
he succeeded in carrying them through by his 
energy, his persistence, and his extraordinary 
good luck. 

Other reforms were meditated. The con- 
stitution forbade him to take part' in legislative 
debates. Like our French President, he was 
kept apart from them. Mr. Wilson wished to 
have this rule modified, and so increase the 
power of his intervention. But a rude reversal 
of fortune troubled his activity. A notable 
section of the Democrats declared itself against 
him, and became allied with the Republicans, 
thus securing a majority in the Senate and As- 
sembly in November, 191 1. From that date 
Mr. Wilson's government was exercised with 
difficulty. He succeeded, however, in having 
passed into law an important bill which placed 
the financial companies under an exact control. 
This ended scandals already referred to. 
Business men hunted out of New York were 
no longer able to cross the Hudson and con- 
tinue their traffic at Hoboken or Jersey City. 



110 President Wilson 

Mr. Wilson had done enough to prove his ca- 
pacity. *'Mr. Wilson's five months' record 
[wrote a Canadian journalist] has shown that 
he is an idealist who can down the politicians 
and get results." 



V — The First Presidential Candidature 



IN addition to these activities Mr. Wilson 
was able to employ his thoughts other 
than in the government of his State. 
The presidential election of 1912 w'as 
drawing near. In June the Parties would se- 
lect their candidates, and in November the peo- 
ple would cast their vote. In 191 1 Mr. Wilson 
made a tour from one political conference to 
another, even going so far as the states bor- 
dering the Pacific. In January, 1912, he de- 
livered a speech at Washington which placed 
him in the front rank of his party. He was 
ready, and not to be ignored. 

A word must be said in explanation of these 
American Parties, so different from the 
French, and at first so difficult to understand. 
Our parties have systematic programmes upon 
which their debates are based. When we think 
of the two famous American parties, the Re- 
publicans and the Democrats, our first and 
very natural idea is to seek the difference be- 
tween their programmes. But this difference 
is hard to find, which surprises and troubles 
us. Without question at one time some differ- 
in 



112 President Wilson 

ence existed. The Republicans were in favour 
of a centralised and developed power. The 
Democrats preferred the autonomy of the 
states. The opposite tendencies produced in 
1 86 1 a sanguinary crisis, a civil war between 
the autonomist South and the more unified 
North. Half-a-century has passed, and the 
question which led the two parties into battle 
has lost its sharpness, and exists no longer. 
Another and more constant question divides 
them. The Republicans are protectionist, 
whilst the Democrats incline towards free 
trade. This, however, is but a tendency, and 
not sufficient in itself to explain the existence 
of two formidable organisations deeply rooted 
in the smallest of towns. Might we say that 
the democratic party is more ^'advanced" than 
its rival? It can be said. Bryan, to some ex- 
tent the Jaures of the United States, is one of 
the leaders. The high finance of New York, at 
Wall Street, supports the republican party. 
But to these deductions it would be easy to 
oflfer opposing indications. The democratic 
party has also financiers to support it. The 
Republicans include leaders of sections which 
vigorously denounce the trusts. If Bryan is 
fought by conservative Republicans he is no 
less opposed by democratic Conservatives, the 
Democrats of the Southern States. Mr. Wil- 



The First Presidential Candidature 113 

son must actually be included amongst them. 
He has never dissimulated the aversion in- 
spired in him by the demagogic compliances of 
his political associate Bryan. When, for the 
first time, in 1906, he considered a presidential 
candidature, he sought for the support of the 
democratic Conservatives. But these general 
observations do not greatly advance our en- 
quiry, and the question remains almost unan- 
swered. Why a republican party? Why a 
democratic party? And why are the two par- 
ties irreducibly opposed? The reply undoubt- 
edly is that they exist because at some former 
time they had a reason to exist, that they con- 
tinue to exist because they have become veri- 
table institutions, societies for political ad- 
vancement, administrative enterprises with a 
following. These two parties have been com- 
pared to the two great Parisian stores, the 
Louvre and the Bon Marche. Both have the 
same function of supplying household goods. 
They rival each other in making offers, each 
one cheaper and more attractive than the other. 
There are the floating customers who give their 
patronage to one or the other according to the 
fascination of the service offered. The com- 
parison is not inexact. A French reader will 
do well to fix it in his memory if he wishes to 
rid himself of the embarrassment of attaching 



114 President Wilson 

too clear and sharp a meaning to words worn 
by much usage. 

What was the position in 1912 of the two 
Parties ? The Republicans had held the Presi- 
dential office for a long while, and were fa- 
tigued. Roosevelt governed from 1902 to 1908 
with a noisy violence which had ceased to 
please. Taft had then been elected. He had 
governed honestly and skilfully, but without 
brilliance. He did not captivate a country 
which loves the inspiration of leadership. The 
republican party supported the candidature of 
a leader who had not forfeited their esteem. 
Taft would have had many chances if Roose- 
velt had not suddenly undertaken to divide the 
electorate by proposing himself as a candidate 
in the name of a new party which called itself 
Progressist. He presented a very fine national 
and democratic programme. But it lacked 
solid organisation, and a divided party gave 
wonderful chances to such disciplined oppo- 
nents as the Democrats. Reunited in confer- 
ence in June, 1912, they struck out the candi- 
dature of Bryan, selecting as champion one 
who had already given proof of knowledge, 
prudence, and capacity. This man was Wil- 
son. When declared candidate his name was 
acclaimed by cheering which lasted for an hour 
and a quarter. This was a good omen. It was 



The First Presidential Candidature 115 



remembered, however, that when Bryan was 
selected as candidate in 1908 the cries, stamp- 
ings, and bravos had continued for one hour 
and twenty-seven minutes. 

His destiny had suddenly enlarged. Wilson 
was in the running for the first magistrature 
in the world. What figure would he cut in such 
a test? We have followed his career when, as 
a professor, he spoke with deep knowledge and 
wisdom. As president of a university his 
words were authoritative, lofty, and eloquently 
impressive. As Governor of a State he spoke 
clearly, and with the requisite force. In a 
word, this tenacious and supple man, eminently 
capable, had been to that moment equal to all 
the tasks he had undertaken. He had now to 
address himself to the multitude, and to per- 
suade and inspire the most vast and mixed of 
peoples. This was a different task. Let us 
see how he attempted and set about it. 

In France we are easily able to study his 
actual words. During 191 3 a volume entitled 
'The New Freedom,'' containing the speeches 
delivered in the course of his presidential can- 
didature, was translated and published in 
French. In addressing the crowd Mr. Wilson 
modified his language. His historic realism 
was slightly put on one side in the shade. 



116 President Wilson 

Crowds, as he well knew, are always in the 
depths of their being optimists and believers, 
and to be swayed by idealistic appeals and re- 
ligious phraseology. His new style of elo- 
quence was idealist and religious, democratic 
and levelling. He seemed to arrive at this ef- 
fect immediately and without effort, as if he 
were guided in his steps by the true instinct 
of public life — what should be said, and the 
manner in which it should be said. The trans- 
formation is so striking that we cannot study 
the life of Mr. Wilson without endeavouring 
to discover the determining springs of action. 
In an interesting article already quoted Miss 
Ida Tarbell also observed the fact and was 
equally astonished. She asked herself the 
same question: "Mr. Wilson's career having 
been for so long that which ordinarily produces 
the intellectual aristocrat of America, how did 
he become the great Democrat he so incontest- 
ably is at the present day?" And she con- 
tinues: '1 asked him the question." '1 do 
not know," he replied frankly. '1 was not 
conscious that a change had been at work in 
me. Certainly my family stock and origin 
must be taken into account. By blood I am a 
mixture of Scotch and Irish. There is no true 
aristocracy in Scotland, neither is there any 
real peasantry. The only difference between 



The First Presidential Candidature 117 

one Scotchman and another is that of educa- 
tion. There has never been any bar between 
me or any one else except a difference in taste. 
My father was the same." This explanation 
must undoubtedly be kept in mind. But we 
must not be discouraged from seeking others. 
Why did this remote hereditary strain slum- 
ber so long? What could have made it so sud- 
denly active, if it was not this instinct of pub- 
lic life which animates Mr. Wilson's personal- 
ity, a singular instinct, at once practical and 
realistic, suggesting to him at every moment 
the most eft'ective words. He always en- 
deavoured to gain the approbation and the sup- 
port of the audiences which listened to him. 
The emotion of a crowd is the most powerful 
force in the world. He conjured it up, and 
handled it with the skill of a master. 'Tn poli- 
tics/' he said to Miss Ida M. Tarbell, 'T am a 
pragmatist. My first thought is, what results 
will be given?" 

We have already noted the wise eloquence 
of Mr. Wilson, when, as a university professor, 
he recommended the study of classical tradi- 
tion to his pupils. Classical learning remains 
a solid legacy of thirty centuries of experience 
to a humble present and an always uncertain 
future. Listen now to the voice of the other 
Wilson, the popular candidate for the leader- 



118 President Wilson 

ship of a nation. Listen as he speaks to this 
American people, exalting before them, and 
with them, the great innovation, and the infi- 
nite hopes of American history. They are not 
speeches [wrote M. Jean Izoulet, the French 
translator of 'The New Freedom'^], they are 
hymns. We do not know which to admire — 
the simple and deep inspiration, or the pro- 
found religious tone. 

''No matter how often we think of it, the 
discovery of America must each time make a 
fresh appeal to our imaginations. For centu- 
ries, indeed from the beginning, the face of 
Europe had been turned toward the east. All 
the routes of trade, every impulse and energy, 
ran from west to east. The Atlantic lay at the 
world's back-door. Then, suddenly the con- 
quest of Constantinople by the Turk closed the 
route to the Orient. Europe had either to face 
about or lack any outlet for her energies; the 
unknown sea at the west at last was ventured 
upon, and the earth learned that it was twice 
as big as it had thought. Columbus did not 
find, as he had expected, the civilisation of 
Cathay ; he found an empty continent. In that 
part of the world, upon that new-found half 
of the globe, mankind, late in its history, was 
thus afforded an opportunity to set up a new 



The First Presidential Candidature 119 

civilisation; here it was strangely privileged 
to make a new human experiment. 

'^Never can that moment of unique oppor- 
tunity fail to excite the emotion of all who con- 
sider its strangeness and richness; a thousand 
fanciful histories of earth might be contrived 
without the imagination daring to conceive 
such a romance as the hiding away of half the 
globe until the fulness of time had come for a 
new start in civilisation. A mere sea-captain's 
ambition to trace a new trade route gave way 
to a moral adventure for humanity. The race 
was to found a new order here on this delect- 
able land, which no man approached without 
receiving, as the old voyagers relate, you re- 
member, sweet airs out of woods aflame with 
flowers and murmurous with the sound of pel- 
lucid waters. The hemisphere lay waiting to 
be touched with life — life from the old centres 
of living surely, but cleansed of defilement, 
and cured of weariness, so as to be fit for the 
virgin purity of a new bride. The whole thing 
springs into the imagination like a wonderful 
vision, an exquisite marvel which once only in 
all history could be vouchsafed. 

''One thing other only compares with it; 
only one other thing touches the springs of 
emotion as does the picture of the ships of Co- 
lumbus drawing near the bright shores — that 



120 President Wilson 

is the thought of the choke in the throat of the 
immigrant of to-day as he gazes from the steer- 
age deck at the land where he has been taught 
to believe he in his turn shall find an earthly 
paradise, where, a free man, he shall forget 
the heartaches of the old life, and enter into 
the fulfilment of the hope of the world. For 
has not every ship that has pointed her prow 
westward borne hither the hopes of generation 
after generation of the oppressed of other 
lands? How always have men's hearts beat 
as they saw the coast of America rise to their 
view ! How it has always seemed to them that 
the dweller there would at last be rid of kings, 
of privileged classes, and of all those bonds 
which had kept men depressed and helpless, 
and would there realise the full fruition of his 
sense of honest manhood, would there be one 
of a great body of brothers, not seeking to de- 
fraud and deceive one another, but seeking to 
accomplish the general good! 

'What was in the writings of the men who 
founded America? To serve the selfish inter- 
ests of America? Do you find that in their 
writings? No; to serve the cause of human- 
ity, to bring liberty to mankind. They set up 
their standards here in America in the tenet 
of hope, as a beacon of encouragement to all 
the nations of the world ; and men came throng- 



The First Presidential Cmididature 121 

ing to these shores with an expectancy that 
never existed before, with a confidence they 
never dared feel before, and found here for 
generations together a haven of peace, of op- 
portunity, of equality. 

"God send that in the complicated state of 
modern affairs we may recover the standards 
and repeat the achievements of that heroic 
age!" 

Let us recover our standards, he said, for 
they have been lost. America is "in a fair way 
of failure — tragic failure," menaced by a new 
form of slavery which must be fought by a new 
freedom. Who are the masters attempting to 
dominate the country? They are the great 
financiers, the Alagnates who corrupt the Par- 
ties, who through the Parties grip the Con- 
gress and through the Congress paralyse the 
President, the direct agent of the People. 
Energetic action must be taken against them. 
"It may be too late to turn back." 

What can be done ? * The healthy and open 
alliance existing between the President and the 
People must be so organised as to dissolve the 
secret and unwholesome connivance of Mag- 
nates and Congress. The President must be 

*Cf. M. Jean Lzoulet's introduction to "La Nouvelle 
Liberte," p. i6. 



122 President Wilson 

freed. "The idea of the Presidents we have 
recently had has been that they were Presi- 
dents of a National Board of Trustees. That 
is not my idea. I have been President of one 
board of trustees, and I do not care to have 
another on my hands. I want to be President 
of the people of the United States/' The na- 
tion must be freed and the constitution modi- 
fied, or trouble would follow. Three new pow- 
ers were necessary. There must be the right 
of Referendum^ that is to say the right to re- 
ject at need any law the Congress may seek to 
impose. This in itself is not sufficient. There 
must be the right of Initiative, the inverse 
right to impose upon Congress any law Con- 
gress may wish to elude. To these double 
powers of Initiative and Referendum must be 
added the third power of Revocation, the 
power of revoking, according to certain defi- 
nite procedure, administrative officials. 

"Let no man be deceived by the cry that 
somebody is proposing to substitute direct leg- 
islation by the people, or the direct reference 
of laws passed in the legislature to the vote 
of the people, for representative government. 
The advocates of these reforms have always 
declared, and declared in unmistakable terms, 
that they were intending to recover representa- 
tive government, not supersede it; that the 



The First Presidential Candidature 123 

initiative and referendum would find no use in 
places where legislatures were really repre- 
sentative of the people whom they were elected 
to serve. The initiative is a means of seeing 
to it that measures which the people want shall 
be passed — when legislatures defy or ignore 
public opinion. The referendum is a means of 
seeing to it that the unrepresentative measures 
which they do not want shall not be placed upon 
the statute book. 

''When you come to the recall, the principle 
is that if an administrative officer — for we will 
begin with the administrative officer — is cor- 
rupt or so unwise as to be doing things that are 
likely to lead to all sorts of mischief, it will be 
possible by a deliberate process prescribed by 
the law to get rid of that officer before the end 
of his term. You must admit that it is a little 
inconvenient sometimes to have what has been 
called an astronomical system of government, 
in which you can't change anything until there 
has been a certain number of revolutions of 
the season. In many of our oldest states the 
ordinary administrative term is a single year. 
The people of those states have not been willing 
to trust an official out of their sight more than 
twelve months. Elections there are a sort of 
continuous performance, based on the idea of 
the constant touch of the hand of the people on 



124 President Wilson 

their own affairs. That is exactly the princi- 
ple of the recall. I don't see how any man 
grounded in the traditions of American affairs 
can find any valid objection to the recall of ad- 
ministrative officers. The meaning of the re- 
call is this — not that we should have unstable 
government, not that officials should not know 
how long their power might last — but that we 
might have government exercised by officials 
who know whence their power came and that 
if they yield to private influences they will 
presently be displaced by public influences. 

**You will of course understand that, both 
in the case of the initiative and referendum and 
in that of the recall, the very existence of these 
institutions, the very possibilities which they 
imply, are half — indeed, much more than half 
— the battle. They rarely need to be actually 
exercised. The fact that the people may initi- 
ate keeps the members of the legislature awake 
to the necessity of initiating themselves; the 
fact that the people have the right to demand 
the submission of a legislative measure to pop- 
ular vote renders the members of the legisla- 
ture wary of bills that would not pass the peo- 
ple; the very possibility of being recalled puts 
the official on his best behaviour." 

President and People being thus strength- 
ened and in unison must employ their force to 



The First Presidential Candidature 125 

reduce the power of the ''Magnates." How 
can it be diminished? By the reform of the 
protectionist tariff, the reform of the banking 
system, the estabHshment of public control of 
all trusts. The reform of the protectionist 
tariff would come first. 

''Under the high tariff there has been formed 
a network of factories, which in their connec- 
tion dominate the market of the United States 
and establish their own prices. Whereas, 
therefore, it was once arguable that the high 
tariff did not create the high cost of living, it 
is now no longer arguable that these combina- 
tions do not — not by reason of the tariff, but 
by reason of their combination under the tariff 
— settle what prices shall be paid; settle how 
much the product shall be ; and settle what shall 
be the market for labour. 

"The 'protective' policy, as we hear it pro- 
claimed to-day, bears no relation to the orig- 
inal doctrine enunciated by Webster and Clay. 
The 'infant industries,' which those statesmen 
desired to encourage, have grown up and 
grown grey, but they have always had new 
arguments for special favours. Their de- 
mands have gone far beyond what they dared 
ask for in the days of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Mc- 
Kinley, though both those apostles of 'protec- 
tion' were, before they died, ready to confess 



126 ' President WUs&n 

that the time had even then come to call a halt 
on the claims of the subsidised industries. 
William McKinley, before he died, showed 
symptoms of adjustment to the new age such 
as his successors have not exhibited. You re- 
member how he joined in opinion with what 
Mr. Blaine before him had said; namely, that 
we had devoted the country to a policy which, 
too rigidly persisted in, was proving a policy 
of restriction; and that we must look forward 
to a time that ought to come very soon when 
we should enter into reciprocal relations of 
trade with all the countries of the world. This 
was another way of saying that we must sub- 
stitute elasticity for rigidity; that we must 
substitute trade for closed ports. McKinley 
saw what his successors did not see. He saw 
that we had made for ourselves a strait- 
jacket. 

". . . We mean that our tariff legislation 
henceforth shall have as its object, not private 
profit, but the general public development and 
benefit; we shall make our fiscal laws, not like 
those who dole out favours, but like those who 
serve a nation. We are going to begin with 
those particular items where we find special 
privilege entrenched. We know what those 
items are; these gentlemen have been kind 
enough to point them out themselves. What 



The First Presidential Candidature 127 

we are interested in first of all with regard to 
the tariff is getting the grip of special inter- 
ests off the throat of Congress. We do not 
propose that special interests shall any longer 
camp in the rooms of the Committee on Ways 
and Cleans of the House and the Finance 
Committee of the Senate. We mean that those 
shall be places where the people of the United 
States shall come and be represented, in order 
that everything may be done in the general 
interest, and not in the interest of particular 
groups of persons who already dominate the 
industries and the industrial development of 
this country. Because, no matter how wise 
these gentlemen may be, no matter how patri- 
otic, no matter how singularly they may be 
gifted with the power to divine the right 
courses of business, there isn't any group of 
men in the United States, or in any other coun- 
try, that is wise enough to have the destinies 
of a great people put into their hands as trus- 
tees. We mean that business in this land shall 
be released, emancipated. 

''Afterwards, by the revision of the banking 
system, the power of the JMagnates could be at- 
tacked. The banking system was old-fash- 
ioned, out of date, and bad in every respect. 
The Magnates allowed it to continue because 
they knew that on the day of reformation the 



128 President Wilson 

federal state would insist upon becoming an 
associated manager in the administration of 
national monetary reserves. The moment for 
this reform could not be delayed. The Mag- 
nates must become accustomed to the idea that 
the public has the right to see clearly into their 
business. They must resign themselves to the 
necessity of opening their books and submit- 
ting their documents to the State Commis- 
sioners. 

"A modern joint stock corporation is a 
segment of the pubHc; bears no analogy to a 
partnership or to the processes by which pri- 
vate property is safeguarded and managed, 
and should not be suffered to afford any covert 
whatever to those who are managing it. Its 
management is of public and general concern, 
is in a very proper sense everybody's business. 
The business of many of these corporations 
which we call public-service corporations, and 
which are indispensable to our daily lives and 
serve us with transportation and light and 
water and power, — their business, for instance, 
is public business; and, therefore, we can and 
must penetrate their affairs by the light of ex- 
amination and discussion. 

'Tn New Jersey, the people have realised 
this for a long time, and a year or two ago 
we got our ideas on the subject enacted into 



The First Presidential Candidature 129 

legislation. The corporations involved op- 
posed the legislation with all their might. They 
talked about ruin — and I really believe they 
did think they would be somewhat injured. 
But they have not been. And I hear I cannot 
tell you how many men in New Jersey say, 
'Governor, we were opposed to you ; we did not 
believe in the things you wanted to do, but now 
that you have done them, we take off our hats. 
That was the thing to do, it did not hurt us a 
bit; it just put us on a normal footing; it took 
away suspicion from our business.' New Jer- 
sey, having taken the cold plunge, cries out to 
the rest of the states, 'Come on in! The wa- 
ter's fine!' I wonder whether these men who 
are controlling the government of the United 
States realise how they are creating every year 
a thickening atmosphere of suspicion, in which 
presently they will find that business cannot 
breathe. 

''So I take it to be a necessity of the hour 
to open up all the processes of politics and of 
public business — open them wide to public 
view; to make them accessible to every force 
that moves, every opinion that prevails in the 
thought of the people; to give society com- 
mand of its own economic life again, not by 
revolutionary measures, but by a steady appli- 
cation of the principle that the people have a 



130 Preddent Wilson 

right to look into such matters and to control 
them; to cut all privileges and patronage and 
private advantage and secret enjoyment out of 
legislation. 

''Wherever any public business is transacted, 
wherever plans affecting the public are laid, or 
enterprises touching the public welfare, com- 
fort and convenience go forward, wherever 
political programmes are formulated, or candi- 
dates agreed on — over that place a voice must 
speak, with the divine prerogative of a people's 
will, the words : 'Let there be light !' '' 

Such, in their main lines, were the politics 
of the candidate Wilson. It was not a con- 
servative policy. Supported by a popular en- 
thusiasm, which was directly excited, it kept 
in sight and aimed at constitutional modifica- 
tions. It was not a revolutionary policy. It 
desired the reinforcement of the powers of the 
state, and the subordination of the parts to 
the whole. It was at once a popular and au- 
thoritative policy which we may call Caesarian. 
Mr. Wilson entitled the collection of speeches 
made during the electoral campaign "The New 
Freedom/' The qualification is prudent, for 
the freedom he promised was assuredly new, 
and a nineteenth-century Liberal would hardly 
recognise it. "Human freedom," he said in one 



The First Presidential Candidature 131 

of his addresses, "consists in perfect adjust- 
ment of human interests and human activities 
and human energies to one another." This 
interlocking has no relationship with that quest 
for independence of thought and life which 
formed the old liberalism. Mr. Wilson knew 
this, and was not frightened. This man, pas- 
sionate in his desire for action, belongs with- 
out reserve to his time. And this age, as he 
recognised, is not for the individual but for the 
mass. When the life of the whole mass is as- 
sured, and when their elected control governs 
with their unbroken consent, then, according 
to Mr. Wilson, liberty is being -enjoyed. 

''What is liberty?" he asked again. ''You 
say of the locomotive that it runs free. What 
do you mean ? You mean that its parts are so 
assembled and adjusted that friction is reduced 
to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjust- 
ment. We say of a boat skimming the water 
wath light foot, 'How free she runs,* when 
we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the 
force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the 
great breath out of the heavens that fills her 
sails. Throw her head up into the wind and 
see how she will halt and stagger, how every 
sheet will shiver and her whole frame be 
shaken, how instantly she is 'in irons,' in the 
expressive phrase of the sea. She is free only 



132 President Wilson 

when you have let her fall off again and have 
recovered once more her nice adjustment to the 
forces she must obey and cannot defy." 

The concentration of power, and the unani- 
mous consent of the populace, — this is what 
President Wilson calls 'liberty/' 

We must not forget that the word liberty 
has other meanings. However, this political 
idea, as he expressed it, is human and generous 
enough, if not strictly liberal. Such a policy 
is always attentive to the feelings of the people, 
and always endeavours to seek their consent 
and to obtain their response. 

Would Mr. Wilson be elected? He had the 
disadvantage of standing as the candidate of 
a party which had been defeated for fifteen 
years, a party which had lost the habit of vic- 
tory. He had the advantage of being opposed 
by a victorious party which had been worn by 
its victories. The republican party, so proud 
of its power, had been split by a schism. The 
conservatives broke away from the progres- 
sives, the first voting for Taft, the second for 
Roosevelt. Taft had the benefit of the old 
party organisation, Roosevelt the enjoyment of 
his personal strength and immense popularity. 
He fought for a programme very similar to 
that of Governor Wilson. But he was sup- 



The First Presidential Candidature 133 

ported by partisans rather than by a party, and 
that spoilt his chances. 

The American presidential election is di- 
vided into two parts. The original idea of the 
founders of the constitution was to take from 
the mass its initiative of choice and to hand 
it over entirely to a body of chosen delegates. 
Each state named a certain number of dele- 
gates proportionate to the figure of its popu- 
lation, down to a minimum of three, which 
could not be further reduced. New York 
State, for example, possesses forty-five votes, 
Pennsylvania thirty-eight, Delaware, Nevada, 
and Wyoming, three each. The process takes 
a long time, but practice has disappointed the 
intentions of the drafters of the constitution. 
The political parties and the people very quickly 
reaffirmed their power, the parties by selecting 
long in advance their presidential candidates, 
the people by imposing on the delegates their 
imperative mandate for one candidate or the 
other. A choice is made between two or three 
candidates proposed by the parties. In each 
State the delegates vote, and the vote of the en- 
tire State is given to the successful candidate. 
The system is rudimentary, and minorities are 
wiped out. The result is that in New York 
State a majority of eleven hundred votes gives 
the casting vote in an electoral body of more 



134 President Wilson 

than a million electors, determines the election 
of thirty-six decocratic delegates, and wipes out 
the views of a republican minority consisting of 
more than forty-nine per cent of the electorate. 
The system can even overcome a majority. 
Let us imagine three lists of delegates proposed 
to the electoral body. One obtains six, another 
four, a third three, total thirteen. That will 
give seven divided against six massed. The 
six have the advantage that their votes will 
represent the thirteen. These facts must be 
remembered to understand Mr. Wilson's first 
election. He was elected although he had not 
the majority of the popular vote. This can 
be seen in the figures. 

Delegate Popular 

Votes Votes 

Wilson 435 6,286,087 

Roosevelt 88 4,125,804 

Taft 8 3475»8i3 

Debs (socialist) o 895,892 

Chafin (prohibitionist) O 200,772 

Reinur (labour) o 38,814 

Thus Mr. Wilson, having obtained 6,286,- 
087 votes against 8,737,295, that is to say, be- 
ing in a minority of 2,450,308 votes, was 
elected the supreme head of the people of the 
United States. 



VI — Th£ Presidency : Reforms 

WHAT kind of a President was the 
country about to have? Mr. Taft 
had been a prudent and conserva- 
tive head of the state. He had 
administered public affairs in the manner of 
a scientific and peaceful jurist. Mr. Wilson's 
past was in itself a clear warning that he would 
act in quite a different w'ay. Would he be a 
new Roosevelt? The two men were far from 
alike — one bubbling over with w^ords, exuber- 
ant, a sort of Niagara, the other a being of ice, 
a living enigma. "The elongated features, 
from forehead to the large and slightly pro- 
jecting chin, mark tenacity and stubbornness," 
wrote an excellent French observer, M. Le- 
chartier, in the Journal des Dchats, April 19, 
1916. ''The thin lips, with their vague bitter- 
ness and sense of disallusion, in their very 
smile add a sarcasm to his words. His looks, 
generally fixed on the ground, though soft, ex- 
press fatigue or an unutterable weariness. His 
voice is musical, and rather deeper than the or- 
dinary. In public and open air speaking it 
gathers strength but never warmth. His ges- 

135 



136 President Wilson 

tures are generally very restrained, but in front 
of an audience, from a platform, they become 
amplified and automatically sweeping and 
jerky, punctuating and marking his thoughts 
so academically and magnificently expressed. 
In attitude, manner, and appearance he ap- 
pears to keep a constant watch upon himself. 
His height apparently increased because he is 
thin, the President of the United States gives 
at first sight a very strong impression of re- 
serve, self-control, and coldness. This im- 
pression becomes stronger at each meeting, and 
it certainly becomes extremely difficult to pen- 
etrate this chilliness, and to know the person- 
ality of the President of the United States.'' 

How Mr. Wilson was going to govern was 
not known. But one thing was sure. He 
would govern. His inaugural address, deliv- 
ered in March, 19 13, was very lofty in tone. 
The moving peroration, read in the light of to- 
day's knowledge, appears startling. 

'The feelings with which we face this new 
age of right and opportunity sweep across our 
heart strings like some air out of God's own 
presence, where justice and mercy are recon- 
ciled and the judge and the brother are one. 
We know our task to be no mere task of poli- 
tics, but a task which shall search us through 
and through, whether we be able to understand 



The Presidency: Reforms 137 

our time and the need of our people, whether 
we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, 
whether we have the pure heart to compre- 
hend and the rectified will to choose our hi^^^h 
course of action. This is not a day of tri- 
umph ; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, 
not the forces of party, but the forces of hu- 
manity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's 
lives hang in the balance ; men's hopes call upon 
us to say what we will do. Who shall live up 
to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I 
summon all honest men, all patriotic, all for- 
ward-looking men, to my side. God helping 
me, I will not fail them, if they will but coun- 
sel and sustain me." 

Soon appeared an indication of the line he 
was likely to take, a small thing in appearance 
but of great signification. The American 
Presidents have the prerogative of naming — 
either alone or with the assent of the Senate 
— a large number of administrative officials. 
This prerogative is nevertheless an extremely 
absorbing and heavy charge. "The mere task 
of making appointments to office, which the 
constitution imposes upon the President [wrote 
Mr. Wilson in Constitutional Government in 
the United States] has come near to breaking 
some of our Presidents down, because it is a 
never-ending task in a civil service not yet put 



138 President Wilson 

upon a professional footing, confused with 
short terms of office, always forming and dis- 
solving." Overwhelming as was this preroga- 
tive, the Presidents had always been jealous to 
retain its exercise because of the powerful per- 
sonal influence it placed in their hands. Presi- 
dent Wilson decided to hand the privilege over 
to his Secretaries of State. He announced 
that he would delegate his powers of nomina- 
tion for each administrative department to the 
chief of that department. His intention was 
to devote the whole of his time to the governing 
of the state. The publication of this radical 
decision made an impression, and gave the 
President an added respect. 

This early sign of his will was soon followed 
by a more startling manifestation. In his 
juvenile essay upon cabinet government, when 
examining for the first time the political con- 
ditions of his country, it will be remembered 
that he asked for more concentration and unity 
in the sources of power. 'The executive has 
constantly need of the co-operation of the leg- 
islative," he wrote. 'The Legislature should 
be assisted by an Executive capable of intelli- 
gently and vigorously carrying out its acts." 
Thus President Wilson expressed himself in 
1879. ^^ April, 1913, he acted. The act of 
the man was an exact confirmation of the 



The Presidency: Reforms 139 

youth's thoughts. The act in itself was sim- 
ple. President Wilson announced that in- 
stead of forwarding" a written Message to Con- 
gress he would attend in person and read his 
Message. 

Amongst the politicians emotion was ex- 
treme. That the President had the right was 
certain. The constitution expressly gave it. 
The two first elected Presidents, Washington 
and John Adams, had always spoken to Con- 
gress when they had something to say. But 
their successor, Jefferson, who w^as an indif- 
ferent orator and a democratically-minded en- 
emy of the very appearance of power, had 
abandoned a privilege no successor had re- 
sumed. Not a single president since Novem- 
ber 22, 1800, had entered Congress. One hun- 
dred and thirteen years is almost long enough 
for the loss of a right by prescription. The 
politicians w^ere stupefied. Some wished to re- 
sist. On April 7, eve of the day fixed by Pres- 
ident Wilson for the solemnity, at a prepara- 
tory meeting two senators expressed their re- 
grets and objections. The custom was primi- 
tive and obsolete; its restoration contrary to 
the spirit of the American constitution. Their 
colleagues listened with attention. But what 
could they do? The President had a support 
stronger even than right. He had the assent 



140 President Wilson 

of the public and of the masses. Some said 
with a frown, ''the President in Congress? A 
speech from the throne!'' People who heard 
these remarks laughed and passed on. The 
senators accepted the position with resignation, 
and did not put up a resistance for which all 
support was lacking. 

On April 8 the President came to the House 
of Representatives. The senators preceded 
him to the chamber, marching two by two, and 
led by Mr. Marshall, Vice-President of the Re- 
public. 

"Senators and Representatives,'' announced 
Speaker Clark, 'T have the honour to present 
the President of the United States." 

President Wilson rose and spoke. His first 
words were a familiar and simple explanation 
of his presence. 

"I am very happy that the occasion has been 
given me to speak directly to the two Houses 
and to verify for myself the impression that 
the President of the United States is not a mere 
department of the Government, hailing Con- 
gress from some isolated island of jealous au- 
thority, and sending messages instead of speak- 
ing naturally and with his own voice. I am 
happy to show at last that he is a human be- 
ing, trying to co-operate with other human be- 
ings in a common service. This experience is 



The Presidency : Reforms 141 

pleasing to me. And in future, in the rela- 
tionship we will have together, it will be the 
normal one." 

A serious innovation was thus introduced 
methodically and skilfully. His manner was 
successful and pleased. The President then 
read his message. He indicated with preci- 
sion the urgency of tariff reform and the prin- 
ciples which should guide it. 'Tt is plain what 
those principles must be. We must abolish 
everything that bears even the semblance of 
privilege or of any kind of artificial advantage, 
and put our business men and producers un- 
der the stimulation of a constant necessity to 
be efficient, economical and enterprising mas- 
ters of competitive supremacy, better workers 
and merchants than any in the world." 

The next day the President again attended 
Congress, and in the Presidential cabinet, un- 
til then so rarely occupied, he discussed with 
the chairmen of committees and the leaders of 
the groups the immediate preparation of a 
scheme of tariff reform. 

Such discussions are always difficult. Presi- 
dent Wilson had perfectly analysed their se- 
cret mechanism in a study published in the 
North American Reviezv for October, 1909. 

'The methods by which tariff bills are con- 



142 President Wilson 

structed have now become all too familiar and 
throw a significant light on the character of the 
legislation involved. Debate in the Houses has 
little or nothing to do with it. The process 
by which such a bill is made is private not pub- 
lic, because the reasons which underlie many 
of the rates imposed are private. The 
stronger faction of the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee of the House makes up the preliminary 
bill, with the assistance of 'experts' whom it 
permits the industries most concerned to sup- 
ply for its guidance. The controlling members 
of the Committee also determine what amend- 
ments, if any, shall be accepted, either from 
the minority faction of the Committee, or from 
the House itself. It permits itself to be dic- 
tated to, if at all, only by the imperative ac- 
tion of a party caucus. The stronger faction 
of the Finance Committee of the Senate, in like 
fashion, frames the bill which it intends to sub- 
stitute for the one sent up from the House. It 
is often to be found at work on it before any 
bill reaches it from the popular chamber. The 
compromise between the two measures is ar- 
ranged in private conference by conferees 
drawn from the two committees. What takes 
place in the committees and in the conference 
is confidential. It is considered impertinent 
for reporters to inquire. It is admitted to be 



The Presidency : Reforms 143 

the business of the manufacturers concerned, 
but not the business of the pubHc, who are to 
pay the rates. The debates which the country 
is invited to hear in the open sessions of the 
Houses are merely formal. They determine 
nothing and disclose very little. It is the pol- 
icy of silence and secrecy, indeed, with regard 
to the whole process that makes it absolutely 
inconsistent with every standard of public duty 
and political integrity." 

This was the position in 1909, when an abor- 
tive attempt was made towards tariff reform. 
Upon the resumption of parliamentary labours 
in April, 191 3, the matter took the same turn, 
and the intrigues of the corridors, of the 
''lobby" according to the phrase in the United 
States, were directed against the proposed 
measure. President Wilson was prepared for 
opposition, but he knew his strength and was 
sure to reach his aim. He was strong because 
tariff reform was the only reform for which 
the Democratic party was wholly and tradi- 
tionally united. There were Democrats who 
were opposed to trusts or who benefited by 
trusts. There were democratic Democrats 
and also aristocratic or plutocratic Democrats. 
There were Northern Democrats and South- 
ern Democrats. There were Democrats who 
had successively voted for the Republicans Mc- 



144< President Wilson 

Kinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, as well as those 
who had voted with more or less enthusiasm 
for Bryan. But scarcely one had ever pro- 
tested against the reduction of the tariff. And, 
in addition, the President was strong because 
this reduction, at the moment he asked for it, 
was nothing less and nothing more than a 
means of fighting the power of the trusts. It 
was a national necessity, the need of which 
had been admitted by the Republicans when, in 
1909, they had attempted the same task. The 
United States had surrounded themselves with 
a tariff barrier at a time when they had to pro- 
tect rising industries. That was sensible. 
But the question for them now was the de- 
velopment of powerful industries, the opening 
up of world markets. The old barrier had be- 
come useless and detrimental. President Wil- 
son's determination was sound, and he was able 
to impose it without fear. He openly de- 
clared that he was in agreement with the par- 
liamentary leaders, and that he did not seek 
for, nor would he accept, any compromise. 
The "lobby," however, persisted. Already the 
amendments were numerous, and they threat- 
ened to equal in number the famous army of 
847 which had emasculated the 1909 reform. 
The President intervened in a most novel and 
unexpected fashion. He published a sort of 



The Presidency: Reforms 145 

communique, which was in fact an appeal to the 
nation. 

'1 think that the pubUc ought to know the 
extraordinary exertions being made by the 
lobby in Washington to gain recognition for 
certain alterations of the Tariff Bill. Wash- 
ington has seldom seen so numerous, so indus- 
trious, or so insidious a lobby. The news- 
papers are being filled with paid advertise- 
ments calculated to mislead not only the judg- 
ment of the public men, but also the public opin- 
ion of the country itself. There is every evi- 
dence that money without limit is being spent 
to maintain this lobby, and to create the ap- 
pearance of a pressure of public opinion antag- 
onistic to some of the chief items of the Tar- 
iff Bill. 

'Tt is of serious interest to the country that 
the people at large should have no lobby, and 
be voiceless in these matters, while great bod- 
ies of astute men seek to create an artificial 
opinion and to overcome the interests of the 
public for their private profit. It is thor- 
oughly worth the while of the people of this 
country to take knowledge of this matter. 
Only public opinion can check and destroy it. 

"The Government in all its branches ought 
to be relieved of this intolerable burden and 
this constant interruption to the calm prog- 



146 President Wilson 

ress of debate. I know that in this I am speak- 
ing for the members of the two Houses, who 
would rejoice as much as I would to be released 
from this unbearable situation." 

Never had a presidential document made so 
great an impression, never was intervention 
more efficacious. The 'lobby" suddenly ceased, 
and the reform was voted. 

Without loss of time another proposed re- 
form was laid before Congress. As president 
of a university, as governor of a state, and here 
again in his new office, Mr. Wilson revealed 
himself as an incomparable director and stim- 
ulator of assembled bodies. He knew how to 
select his aims, and how to advance them by 
overthrowing all obstacles. This is his genius. 
This peculiar strength, for so long confined by 
the calm existence of a professorial career, pre- 
sents a curious picture. And, still more sin- 
gular, this public man is a very solitary man. 
He had always been distant in manner ; he was 
now becoming unapproachable. He saw his 
secretaries of state during strictly limited in- 
terviews. Upon any particular question he 
preferred to receive a report rather than ad- 
vice. The deponent is called, he is invited to 
speak, and the President listens, sometimes tak- 
ing a rapid shorthand note. 'T have con- 



The Presidency : Reforms 147 

stantly remarked in the business with which I 
occupy myself that there is nobody who does 
not know something that I do not know, but 
few who know more things than I know." He 
allows then that people can instruct him, but 
reserves to himself the work of synthesis. And 
this man who becomes more and more solitary 
also becomes more and more a man of the 
crowd. He thinks with the crowd, and wishes 
to become master of its thoughts. To say the 
truth his one great strength is the assent of the 
crowed w hich has elected him, listens to his mes- 
sages and appeals, and which helps him to curb 
the politicians by reason of the fear with which 
it inspires them. This is the constant occupa- 
tion of his thought. His speeches, his mes- 
sages, even his diplomatic notes, are written 
— and will be written — not for the crowd but 
with it in his mind. The documents are always 
submitted to the faithful Tumulty, his private 
secretary. "Tumulty is admirable," he has 
said, "for guessing the effect words may pro- 
duce from the platform." If the President 
lives alone, if he keeps the doors of the White 
House closed, the reason is undoubtedly to be 
found in his desire that the people may not sus- 
pect him of intimacy with the leaders of finance, 
the Magnates, to give them their American 
name. They ask for interviews in vain. The 



148 President Wilson 

President evades or refuses their requests. 
Clearly he does not wish to meet them. It is 
a principle and an attitude, which he clings to 
with an increasing vigour — sometimes with 
harm to the general service. He interrupts 
his friendships of the everyday world. If he 
plays at golf he goes straight to the greens 
without passing through the clubhouse. His 
recreation thus becomes solitary. He is not 
less distant towards the politicians who wish 
to approach him. They insist, but obtain noth- 
ing. One of them has written a humorous 
complaint : 

''I have seen Tumulty. I have tried that 
half-a-dozen times. Nothing doing. Tu- 
multy promises, but nothing happens. Now 
you see I have got to go back home for several 
weeks. All the folks home will be asking me. 
Well, Abner, how does the President talk to 
you about this German business when he sees 
you?' So far I have bluffed them. But if 
they should get on to the fact that I've never 
seen Wilson to speak to him it would end my 
chance of re-election." * 

On the other hand the President is extremely 
careful not to lose contact with the press. The 
press is able to manage the people. He de- 

*"The Mystery of Woodrow Wilson/* in the North Ameri- 
can Review for September, 1917. 



The Presidency: Reforms 149 

sires, as much as possible, to manage the press. 
This man, who receives nobody, devotes a spe- 
cial afternoon every week to a journalistic re- 
ception. They talk to him and cross-question 
him upon the last diplomatic difficulty in IMex- 
ico, the tariff, or the financial problem. Some- 
times he evades the question. "On this point 
my mind is not made up. It is open." Or, 
wdth a picturesque formula, *'my mind is to 
let." But he always gives an answer, and 
these cleverly calculated replies reach the 
masses through those journals the President 
has made the echo of his plans. 

Thus he went from reform to reform. Tar- 
iff reduction created a budget deficit. A new 
tax was necessary, and federal income tax was 
levied. Incomes of less than $4,000 were ex- 
empt, and incomes over that sum were taxed 
on a scale beginning with a minimum of one 
per cent. The yield of this tax in 19 13 being 
less than anticipated, the rates were increased 
in 1914. 

But the most formidable enterprise in which 
President Wilson succeeded was the reform 
of the American banking system. This sys- 
tem was detestable. It was, however, accept- 
able to some powerful banks which had become 
accustomed to its defects, and were troubled 



150 President Wilson 

at the thought of a reform which threatened 
to be far-reaching and also to Hmit their for- 
mer freedom. In effect the reform did so 
Hmit them. The democratic idea was over- 
shadowed by the power possessed by these 
great banks. The national interest agreed ill 
with institutions sheltered from control, and 
in certain events capable — by reason of the 
money they held — of influencing the state it- 
self. The President knew how to combine the 
democratic idea and the national interest. Sus- 
tained by these allied forces, he resolved to re- 
cast the entire system. 

''The structure of this legislation is sim- 
ple,'' wrote Mr. H. J. Ford. 'The thousands 
of national banks scattered throughout the 
country like so many separate wells were 
brought together into one system in which they 
stand as local conduits from a national reser- 
voir. The country was divided into twelve 
districts, in each of which is a federal reserve 
bank, with which the member banks of the dis- 
trict keep their reserves and from which they 
can obtain supplies of currency on occasion by 
rediscount of their holdings of securities and 
commercial paper. Each reserve bank has its 
own board of directors, nine in number, six of 
whom are to be chosen by the member banks 



The PresideTicy: Reforms 151 

upon a preferential ballot scheme, and three are 
appointed by the Federal Reserve Board, which 
exercises general supervision over the system. 
This Board is composed of the secretary of the 
treasury, the comptroller of the currency, and 
five other members appointed by the President, 
and it wields such extensive powers of super- 
vision, direction and control that it is the ad- 
ministrative centre of the system. There is 
also a body designated the Federated Advis- 
ory Council, chosen by the banks and consist- 
ing of as many members as there are federal 
reserve districts. The powders of this body are 
purely consultative, but its existence provides 
the banks with an organ of their own for rep- 
resentations to the Federal Reserve Board or 
for concert of action among themselves on mat- 
ters of common interest. The federal reserve 
banks have general banking powers, and with 
the consent of the Federal Reserve Board may 
establish agencies in foreign countries. In- 
deed the act supplies a powerful engine for es- 
tablishing the United States as a centre of in- 
ternational banking." 

On June 23, 19 13, whilst the Senate was dis- 
cussing the Tariff Bill the President came to 
the House and spoke. He told the members 
that he would keep them to work despite the 



152 President Wilson 

heat, that considerations of personal health 
must yield to the public good, and that it was 
absolutely imperative to give the country a new 
banking system. The representatives contin- 
ued their duties without intermission. On Sep- 
tember 9 they passed the bill which the Senate 
agreed to on December 19. Had it been re- 
jected or weakened by amendments the Gov- 
ernment of the United Staes would have been 
without much of that power which to-day 
strengthens it for the conduct of the war. 

On January 20, 19 14, the President ad- 
dressed himself once again to Congress, de- 
manding new legislation concerning trusts. 
He wished to define and to increase former re- 
strictions. In addition he asked for the crea- 
tion of a commission of enquiry and justice 
with sufficient powers to unravel the ramifica- 
tions of the trusts and to bring them to judg- 
ment. A similar commission had already been 
formed to watch the railway companies. The 
President demanded increased powers for both. 
He sought to put into action one formula of 
his electoral campaign — to see clearly, and to 
obtain justice. 

The President thus carried through within a 
single year three considerable reforms, one 



The Presidency: Reforms 153 

dealing with tariff reform, a second with the 
banking system, and the third with the control 
of trusts. This was the account of his legis- 
lative work when war broke out. 



VII — President Wilson and War 



PRESIDENT WILSON needed peace 
to complete his legislative work. He 
had to deal with war. The events of 
August, 19 14, interrupted his reform- 
ing activity. 

What exactly have been President Wilson's 
ideas upon the subject of war? Has he ever 
been, according to the belief of some (and a 
behef not without reason), a pacifist? A 
knowledge of his career does not by any means 
help us in this respect. He has not the elo- 
quence and military tastes of a Roosevelt. But 
he has studied history too well not to recognise 
the position and rights of war. In his history 
of the American people he had judged the va- 
rious wars in which the United States had 
taken part. He had explained them, and ap- 
proved of them. And he finished at last in 
prophesying a new America, superabundant in 
wealth and energy, ready to burst forth and 
overflow those old worlds from which she had 
sprung. These were not the thoughts of a 
pacifist. 

But man proposes, and circumstances dis- 

154 



President Wilson and War 155 

pose. The surroundings of Mr. Wilson as 
candidate and president had perceptibly 
brought him into touch with the pacifists. The 
famous orator Bryan was a member of his 
party and a colleague and Secretary of State 
in his cabinet. He was obliged to make use of 
him. As an adversary and rival he had to 
meet the tumultuous Roosevelt, who was the 
partisan of a resolutely military and imperial- 
istic policy. His task consisted in urging the 
American masses towards fresh enthusiasms, 
in fixing their attention upon domestic reforms 
which could only be brought to fruition in times 
of peace. 

From the moment he took up office President 
Wilson was confronted by exterior problems 
and menaces of war. They multiplied across 
the whole face of the world. He exerted him- 
self to remove them from his path with his cus- 
tomary firmness. International finance was 
preparing to seize the goods of China, and that 
nation was in urgent need of 150 millions. She 
was refused the sum she asked for, but offered 
1,500 millions in exchange for close control and 
disastrous guarantees. China was about to 
suffer the fate of Persia and Turkey. Presi- 
dent Wilson categorically refused to support 
the American financiers, and in fact insisted 



156 President Wilson 

that they should leave the combination. This 
was his first step. 

The administration of the Panama Canal, 
then in process of completion, aroused many 
complex and dangerous difficulties. The peo- 
ple of the United States were easily moved by 
anything affecting this great enterprise. The 
territory crossed by the canal belonged to Co- 
lombia. Essentially necessary to be under the 
control of the United States, President Roose- 
velt took possession of it in the most ex- 
peditious manner. Colombia protested, and, 
amongst other items, demanded an indemnity 
of ten million dollars. The South American 
republics interested themselves in the demand, 
and followed the matter with an uneasy at- 
tention. President Wilson dealt with it in the 
fashion of a great lord. He ended the whole 
business by a gift of 25 millions. As for the 
territory, far from giving it back he enlarged 
it by a sHce of the Republic of Nicaragua which 
was useful for the security and good adminis- 
tration of the canal. He acquired a roadstead 
and its rights. He did not allow the real in- 
terests of his country to be endangered. 

Another very delicate question had been un- 
pleasantly handed to him by his predecessor 
Mr. Taft. Again it concerned the Panama 
Canal. Great Britain had discussed the sub- 



President Wilson and War 157 

ject of the canal with the United States, and 
had obtained a promise (which had been regu- 
larised by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 
1901) that the tolls levied should apply equally 
and without discrimination to the shipping of 
all nations. In exchange for this promise 
Great Britain professed herself disinterested in 
the construction and administration of the 
canal. But in 19 12 Mr. Taft had made, or al- 
lowed, a law to pass exempting the entire coast- 
ing trade of the United States. All the Eu- 
ropean powers, in concert with Great Britain, 
protested. Mr. Taft refused to budge. Sir 
Edward Grey proposed that the difference 
should be carried to arbitration. The Congress 
had not responded and nationalist feelings 
were agitated. This was the position when 
President Wilson intervened. Assuring him- 
self that the British demand was honest, he 
acted upon that ground. He went to Congress 
and declared that in his view ''the exemption 
of coasting trade was in plain contravention 
of the Treaty of 1901. . . . We are too big 
and powerful and too self-respecting a nation 
to interpret with too strained or refined a read- 
ing of w^ords our own promises just because 
we have power enough to give us leave to read 
them as we please. . . . The large thing to do 
is the only thing we can do — voluntary with- 



158 President Wilson 

drawal from a position everywhere questioned 
and misunderstood.'* He finished in a per- 
sonal and mysterious manner. ''If the law is 
not repealed I shall not know how to deal with 
other matters of even greater delicacy and 
nearer consequence." These last words cre- 
ated some astonishment, and the trend of the 
speech made an impression. The litigious law 
was repealed, but not without discussion. This 
singular victory was gained by the President 
alone against the advice of both republican 
and democratic leaders. The date was June, 
1914. 

The words which had excited so much com- 
ment were explained by a further difficulty. 
The Mexican problem confronted President 
Wilson from the day he took office, and it re- 
mains still unsettled. Mexico is an immense 
country with great natural w^ealth, but poor in 
men capable to use it to advantage. For many 
miles its frontiers run with those of the United 
States. Formerly Austria and France coveted 
it. Perhaps Japan has the same ambition to- 
day. It remains a prey, a temptation, a 
trouble, and an imminent war peril. The 
United States have great interests in Mexico, 
possessing or controlling the larger industries, 
the railways, and the mines. In 19 13 the coun- 
try was in general insurrection. A national- 



President Wilson and War 159 

ist party had overthrown President Diaz, ac- 
cused of having over favoured the concession 
hunters and capitaHsts of the United States. 
The leaders of the marauding bands, Huerta 
and Villa, quarrelled over the government, or, 
more exactly, the pillage of the country and 
primarily the pillage of foreign property. 
Considerable American interests were threat- 
ened, and American citizens had been mur- 
dered. To intervene seemed legitimate and 
easy. In reality the question was not so sim- 
ple, for it was intermingled with other prob- 
lems of extreme importance. Certainly the 
United States were big enough to equip an 
army and impose it on Mexico. But behind 
Mexico, first republic of Latin America, were 
all the alarmed and vigilant South American 
republics. And when President Wilson faced 
the Alexican problem he saw' in front of him 
another and graver problem — that of the two 
Americas. If he imposed his will upon Mex- 
ico he would have to do the same to the whole 
of Latin America, and to renounce all hopes of 
economic friendship or moral predominance. 
This would introduce into the New World all 
the difficulties of the Old, rivalries, alliances, 
diplomatic ruptures, wars. The popular press 
and the financial syndicates urged President 
Wilson towards intervention. President Taft, 



160 President Wilson 

at the moment of giving up office, appeared to 
be in favour of recognising the presidency of 
Huerta, one of the leaders of the factions, and 
of protecting him as Russia protected the 
Shah of Persia and France the Sultan of Mo- 
rocco. 

Without delay President Wilson marked the 
change in his policy. He refused to recognise 
President Huerta, a brigand and assassin, de- 
claring him unfit to govern an American state. 
But he said that he was prepared to recognise 
a president elected by constitutional methods. 
These friendly suggestions were not accepted, 
and the Mexican bands continued to kill their 
enemies and their associates. President Wil- 
son followed the course of a waiting policy. 

'We are happy to call ourselves the friends 
of Mexico,'' he said in his message of August 
27, 19 1 3. "It was our duty to offer our good 
offices for the establishment of a condition of 
things until a legal authority was restored in 
this country. . . . We have not succeeded. 
... By reason of its proximity to Mexico, the 
United States could not remain inactive. ... 
It is now our duty to show what true neutral- 
ity will do to enable the people of Mexico to 
set their affairs in order again and wait for a 
further opportunity to offer our friendly coun- 
sels. . . . The pressure of moral force would 



President Wilson and War 161 

sooner or later break down the barrier raised 
against us by the pride and prejudice of our 
neighbours. We would intervene rather as 
the friends of Mexico than as her enemies." 

He warned his fellow citizens of the dan- 
gers they ran in remaining within the districts 
threatened by civil war, and also of the risks 
they undertook. He appeared to repudiate the 
imperialistic doctrine, Roman and British, 
which authorises a state to follow its subjects 
into any place and to declare war in order to 
defend their private interests. 

The President had much to tolerate and 
many to conciliate. The more he endeavoured 
to escape this war the more it threatened him. 
Indifferent to his exhortations, Mexico con- 
tinued its rule of brigandage, robbery, and as- 
sassination. In April, 1914, some American 
marines who had landed at Tampico for petrol 
were arrested by a Huertist colonel. The na- 
tion was attacked and insulted. Action was 
necessary. President Wilson moved with a 
rapidity and a vigour which proved that the 
temperament of a preaching friar was not the 
only foundation of his nature. He asked for 
full powers from Congress. They were im- 
mediately given. The President judged this 
sufficient, and, without waiting for the Senate 
to ratify the vote of the Lower House, he 



162 President Wilson 

landed troops at Vera Cruz. The Senate pro- 
tested. President Wilson explained that the 
occupation of Vera Cruz was not an act of war, 
but an act of preparation for war rendered in- 
dispensable through circumstance. . . . For 
several days the matter was discussed. 

Was this war ? Those who believed so were 
deceived. Once more President Wilson was 
able to avoid it. Argentina, Brazil, and Chili 
('*the A. B. C. Powers" as they are called in 
the New World) proposed mediation. The 
President admitted the proposal at once, and 
warmly thanked the young South American 
powers. Nothing could disturb his views more 
than the peril of a disagreement with them; 
nothing would satisfy him more than frank 
collaboration and an attempt at arbitration. 
The mediation was negotiated on Canadian soil 
at Niagara Falls. It produced no certain ef- 
fect, but time had been gained, and calm had 
been reached. In July, Huerta, having been 
discredited, retired to Europe. If not peace 
the result was pacification, and an effective 
manifestation of Pan-American solidarity — in 
any case a gain. President Wilson was in- 
sulted by his political opponents. He paid no 
attention to their outrages and followed his 
own path. He considered, and undoubtedly 
not without reason, that the Republic of the 



President Wilson and War 163 

United States possessed enough real strength 
to be condescending without detriment to its 
prestige. 

During the disembarkment at Vera Cruz 
some sailors had been killed. On May 22, 
19 14, President Wilson pronounced a funeral 
eulogy over their bodies. 

"We have gone down to Mexico to serve 
mankind if we can find a way. We do not want 
to fight the Mexicans; we want to serve them 
if we can. A war of aggression is not a war in 
which it is a proud thing to die, but a war of 
service is one in which it is grand thing to die." 

Having spoken of the dead, he had a word 
to say for those who had insulted him: 

*'I never was under fire, but I fancy there 
are some things just as hard to do as to go 
under fire. I fancy it is just as hard to do 
your duty when men are sneering at you as 
when they are shooting at you. When they 
shoot at you they can only take your natural 
life. When they sneer at you they can wound 
your heart. The cheers of the moment are 
not what a man ought to think about, but the 
verdict of his conscience and the conscience of 
mankind." 

It may be thought that a funeral address is 
not the best means of upholding oneself, or of 
entering into comparison with the heroes whose 



164 President Wilson 

memories are being exalted. But let that pass. 
We are now in May, 19 14, at the moment when 
one history is ending and another beginning. 
Let us add the fact that President Wilson had 
concluded treaties of arbitration with Great 
Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Spain, the three 
Scandinavian states, China, and the greater 
part of the Latin republics of South America. 
This shows how really pacific his policy was, a 
more effectively peaceful policy than any chief 
of a state had ever yet followed. Working 
during a very difficult period, President Wilson 
had been able to elude and to send to sleep the 
demon of war. 

Europe was struck by a thunderbolt. The 
first blow was in its suddenness and violence a 
worthy portent of the catastrophe. The peo- 
ples of Europe were surprised. Can we be as- 
tonished if it surprised the people of the New 
World? They learned at the same time of the 
menace of war, and of war itself. They could 
not believe in such a thing, and were still await- 
ing negotiations when millions of men were 
already in arms and at blows. Their first 
feeling was one of stupor. A whole world, 
the Old World, the womb of thought and of 
the arts, was streaming in blood before them. 
The various parts did not take shape at first. 



President Wilson and War 165 

Despondency, distress, mourning mingled with 
the destruction of all hope. 

We must return to the man who is the sub- 
ject of our study, and who really occupies the 
centre of the whole history — President Wilson. 
Even in his domestic life the moment was full 
of bitterness. His wife was dying, and by 
her bedside he received and despatched decisive 
telegrams. War had broken out. Belgium 
was invaded. What was he going to do? His 
responsibility was immense. The laws had 
made it heavy, and tradition had increased the 
load. He himself had deliberately made it 
greater still, in proclaiming himself the 
^'leader'* of his people, their director and their 
chief. 

What was he going to do ? No one foresaw 
intervention. How could the unarmed United 
States intervene in a distant war which accord- 
ing to all judgment would be of short dura- 
tion? Protestation against the violation of 
Belgian neutrality was deemed vain even by 
the most ardent. What was the good of pro- 
testing if one was not able to act? President 
Wilson must be defended against the sharp re- 
proaches levelled at him later on by Mr. Root 
and Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt's words 
during the first weeks of the war are well 
known. They express exactly the anxiety and 



166 President Wilson 

prudence that every neutral felt. He declared 
that he would support obediently the Presi- 
dent's policy. "I am sure that I express your 
views in saying that we must first act as Amer- 
icans, and that we must support every public 
man who endeavours with all his force to keep 
America free from this war."* 

And with reference to Belgium the ex-Presi- 
dent wrote: ''Sympathy is compatible with 
full acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our 
uttering a single word of official protest un- 
less we are prepared to make that protest effec- 
tive ; and only the clearest and most urgent na- 
tional duty would ever justify us in deviating 
from our rule of neutrality and non-inter- 
vention." t 

The first decisions were then relatively sim- 
ple. On August 4 President Wilson issued a 
declaration of neutrality. On the 5th he in- 
formed the belligerents that from that day un- 
til the end of the war he was at their service 
as a mediator. On the 6th he informed all the 
Powers that the Government of the United 
States would watch and maintain the maritime 
rights of neutrals. 

There were three essential steps, but they 
ended no difficulties. As a historian President 

"^Outlook, August 15, 1914. 
t Ihid., September 23, 1914. 



President Wilson and War 167 

Wilson was able to remember how the United 
States had been dragged into the Napoleonic 
wars. The vigorous blockade then exercised 
by England on the high seas had ended in 
complications and war. However, in that time 
the United States had been a feeble power, 
far away and separated from the Old World. 
Could the new United States, so powerful and 
with so many interests, preserve its peace? 
And, if they had to fight, which should be the 
enemy — Germany or England? How could 
one guess what would take place on the high 
seas? There England was all powerful, and 
perhaps against her the United States would 
come into conflict. Both alternatives had to 
be kept in mind, and either was redoubtable. 
President Wilson felt that the factions forming 
in the United States itself were gathering 
force. Men of German birth or origin were 
deeply moved by the peril of the distant father- 
land. Those who were British, and this in- 
cluded the entire American society of the At- 
lantic States, stood for France, invaded Bel- 
gium, and Great Britain. Thus the single 
outbreak of this distant war gravely threat- 
ened to split the unity of the young Union. No 
one was better able than President Wilson to 
measure this immense danger. The spectator 
who dares to disregard his anxiety and re- 



168 President Wilson 

proach his prudence must be rash indeed. 
President Wilson knew his motley people, a 
mixture of all the races of Europe — Slav, Ital- 
ian, German, Jew, Polish, Irish, English. He 
knew that this people, which had grow^n to- 
gether so confusedly, remained after one hun- 
dred and thirty years the ill formed sketch of 
a true race. President Wilson understood 
these things to the very bottom, and was able 
to gauge the imminence of a double danger, a 
foreign war at the same time as a civil war. 
How could he fail to feel it? The seeds of 
civil war were to be found in his own person. 
He was wholly English by blood, almost en- 
tirely English by education. He loved Eng- 
land, and from the beginning of the conflict 
his sympathies were given without hesitation. 
They were passionate and instinctive as well 
as reflective. He had then to place them un- 
der vigorous discipline, and to give an exam- 
ple of the strictest and purest Americanism. 
From civil war, which would be mortal, he 
wished at first to turn and preserve his peo- 
ple. Speaking directly and paternally, on 
August i8, 1914, he issued his first appeal to 
the American people. 

''The effect of the war upon the United 
States will depend upon what American citi- 
zens say or do. Every man who really loves 



President Wilson and War 169 

America will act and speak in the true spirit of 
neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality 
and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. 
The spirit of the nation in this critical mat- 
ter will be determined largely by what indi- 
viduals and society and those gathered in pub- 
lic meetings do and say, upon what newspapers 
and magazines contain, upon what our minis- 
ters utter in their pulpits and men proclaim as 
their opinions on the streets. 

'The people of the United States are drawn 
from many nations, and chiefly from the na- 
tions now at war. It is natural and inevitable 
that there should be the utmost variety of sym- 
pathy and desire among them with regard to 
the issues and circumstances of the conflict. 
Some will wish one nation, others another to 
succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be 
easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. 
Those responsible for exciting it will assume a 
heavy responsibility; responsibility for no less 
a thing than that the people of the United 
States, whose love of their country and whose 
loyalty to its Government should unite them as 
Americans all, bound in honour and affection 
to think first of her and her interests, may be 
divided into camps of hostile opinions hot 
against each other, involved in the war itself 
in impulse and opinion, if not in action. Such 



170 President Wilson 

divisions among us would be fatal to our peace 
of mind and might seriously stand in the way 
of proper performance of our duty as one great 
nation at peace, the one people holding itself 
ready to play a part of impartial mediation and 
speak the counsels of peace and accommoda- 
tion, not as a partisan but as a friend." 

Peace! During those early weeks an idea 
formed itself in the American mind that the 
mission of the American nation was to give all 
others an example of peace, and to end the war 
by imposing upon the whole world a peaceful 
tradition which belonged to itself alone. It 
was an idea, a belief. But ideas and beliefs 
are forces that President Wilson knows how- 
to appreciate and direct. He took up this 
idea. Other leaders who wished to assure the 
unity of their people have invoked blood and 
race. President Wilson was not able to do 
this. In the Republic of the United States the 
racial spirit divides rather than unites. A ma- 
terial bond lacking, it was necessary to seek for 
and strengthen a spiritual lien. President 
Wilson made this effort, and his words became 
more solemn and religious. 

''I venture, therefore, my fellow-country- 
men, to speak a solemn word of warning to 
you against that deepest, most subtle, most es- 
sential breach of neutrality which may spring 



President Wilsoii and War 171 

out of partisanship, out of passionately taking 
sides. The United States must be neutral in 
fact as well as in name during these days that 
are to try men's souls. We must be impartial 
in thought as well as in action, must put a curb 
upon our sentiments as well as upon every 
transaction that might be construed as a pref- 
erence of one party to the struggle before an- 
other/' 

He himself gave the example of the virtues 
he counselled. All the belligerents turned to 
him with their objurgations. The Emperor 
William telegraphed that the French did not 
observe the laws of war. President Poincare 
telegraphed that the Germans did not observe 
the laws of war. King Albert protested 
against the violation of Belgium's rights. To 
all appeals the President made the same re- 
ply. 

''Presently, I pray God very soon, this war 
will be over. The day of accounting w^ill then 
come, when I take it for granted the nations 
of Europe will assemble to determine a settle- 
ment. Where wrongs have been committed, 
their consequences and the relative responsi- 
bility involved will be assessed. 

'The nations of the world have fortunately 
by agreement made a plan for such a reckon- 
ing and settlement. What such a plan cannot 



172 President Wilson 

compass, the opinion of mankind, the final ar- 
biter in all such matters, will supply. It would 
be unwise, it would be premature, for a single 
government, however fortunately separated 
from the present struggle, it would even be in- 
consistent with the neutral position of any na- 
tion which, like this, has no part in the con- 
test, to form or express a final judgment/' 

How vague it seems, and how chimerical! 
However one clear trait can be discerned, a 
note that persists in all the following declara- 
tions. President Wilson would not admit that 
the war could end in military downfall and the 
destruction of one of the opposed parties. He 
held for certain that a congress of states would 
settle the terms of agreement. His phraseol- 
ogy astonishes. It is pompous and mystical, 
differing strangely from the ordinary language 
of the chancelleries. But, in truth. President 
Wilson is not a diplomatist. He is the head 
of a popular state, and elected by the crowd. 
When he replies to the European governments 
his words must be so put together that — im- 
printed in the American newspapers — they are 
easily and usefully understood. President 
Wilson is always a publicist whilst being at 
the same time a leader. He never ceases to 
speak to the masses for whom he decides. 

He now spoke to them with a direct solem- 



President Wilson and War 173 

nity he has not surpassed. He decreed that 
October 4 should be a day of prayer for the Re- 
public of the United States. He brought to- 
gether and taught his people with pastoral au- 
thority. This singular text, judicial and re- 
ligious, must be quoted with exactness: 

Whereas great nations of the world have taken up 
arms against one another and war now draws millions 
of men into battle w^hom the counsel of statesmen have 
not been able to save from the terrible sacrifice ; 

And wherel\s in this as in all things it is our privi- 
lege and duty to seek counsel and succour of Almighty 
God, humbling ourselves before Him, confessing our 
weakness and our lack of any wisdom equal to these 
things ; 

And whereas it is the especial wish and longing of 
the people of the United States, in prayer and counsel 
and all friendliness, to serve the cause of peace ; 

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the 
United States of America, do designate Sunday, the 
fourth day of October next, a day of prayer and sup- 
plication and do request all God-fearing persons to 
repair on that day to their places of worship there to 
unite their petitions to Almighty God that, overruling 
the counsel of men, setting straight the things they 
cannot govern or alter, taking pity on the nations now 
in the throes of conflict, in His mercy and goodness 
showing a way where men can see none, He vouch- 
safe His children healing peace again and restore once 
more that concord among men and nations without 
which there can be neither happiness nor true friend- 
ship nor any wholesome fruit of toil or thought in 
the world; praying also to this end that he forgive us 
our sins, our ignorance of His holy wil-, our wilful- 
ness and many errors, and lead us in the paths of 



174 President Wilson 

obedience to places of vision and to thoughts and 
counsels that purge and make wise. 

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and 
caused th-e seal of the United States to be affixed. 

Don^ at the city of Washington this eighth day of 
September in the year of our Lord one thousand nine 
hundred and fourteen and of the independence of the 
United States of America the one hundred and thirty- 
ninth. 

(Seal) WooDRow Wilson. 

By the President: 

William Jennings Bryan, 

Secretary of State. 

We believe this to be one of the finest pages 
President Wilson has written. Certainly po- 
litical intentions were not wholly absent from 
its composition. But its thoughts are so full 
of grandeur, it breathes such an accent of truth 
and emotion, that in reading it we forget the 
political surroundings and wish to believe that 
the President himself forgot them when writ- 
ing this document. He spoke. And w4th the 
voice of the Chief of the State we hear the voice 
of the man, the humble Woodrow Wilson, who 
had been hardly tried during those forty days, 
not only in his private life by the loss of the 
companion of his youth, but also in his public 
life by receiving on his shoulders the heaviest 
weight a mortal has ever carried. ''But God 
reveals a path where men see none !" This is 
truly a cry of anguish. Imagine him on this 



President Wilson and War 175 

day of October 4, praying in company with his 
people, bowing down in the Calvinistic temple, 
his place of worship. He sees before him 
darkness and danger. He collects together 
his strength, his guiding principles of pru- 
dence, peace, order, and clearness of soul. He 
asks the same effort of his people — passions 
kept in silence, deeds restrained by discipline. 

In September, the Marne. After this vic- 
tory there appeared to have been an attempt 
at negotiation in which President Wilson was 
concerned. Was Germany beginning to recog- 
nise, without prolonging the massacre, the fu- 
tility of her enterprise? The authoritative 
biography of the President by Mr. Henry Jones 
Ford is affirmative upon this obscure historical 
point. *'After the Battle of the Marne some 
intimations reached him of sufficient substance 
to encourage another effort and the German 
Government was approached on the subject 
through Ambassador Gerard at Berlin. The 
Imperial Chancellor replied that as Germany's 
enemies had agreed to make peace only by joint 
action, the United States should obtain pro- 
posals of peace from the Allies, which must be 
such as to guarantee Germany against future 
attacks." There was nothing to be done. The 



176 President Wilson 

President allowed the negotiation to fall to the 
ground. 

October, November, December, 1914; fight- 
ing in Flanders, fighting in Poland. People 
were beginning to realise that this war would 
be horrible in its length as well as in its vio- 
lence. The Americans w^ere always far from 
foreseeing or imagining their intervention. 
What should they do? 'Xet us work and 
give," replied and advised one of their best re- 
views, the Outlook, of December 2. "Thank 
God, the blessing of giving has been left to us 
Americans." The Americans worked and 
gave. They prepared convoys of food, arms, 
metals. They organised assistance for the 
wounded in northern France and Belgium, of 
which we shall know later the fabulous cost. 
They became passionately engrossed in their 
charitable works. They set up for their coun- 
try a mission. Alone they were to continue 
and to safeguard the virtues of peace, thus 
laying the foundation for humanity's future, 
and becoming its arbiter by their wisdom, its 
guardian by their strength. 

President Wilson had stood aside from pub- 
lic view owing to his recent mourning, the 
trial of circumstances, and his inborn taste for 
solitude whilst engaged upon the problems of 
his office. In every respect he favoured these 



President Wilson and War 177 

moral occupations which calmed and employed 
the American people. He continued to give an 
example of pacifism. The Mexican question 
was still dangerous, the American troops 
still in occupation at Vera Cruz. The Presi- 
dent made up his mind not to be distracted 
from the European menace by such secondary 
conflicts. He could not better gain time than 
in arranging this matter. Entering into ne- 
gotiations with General Carranza, the most re- 
spectable of the Mexican leaders, he wished to 
withdraw his troops on September i6, the an- 
niversary day of Mexican independence. This 
clever courtesy agreed with the spirit of his 
policy. He was not able to carry his wish into 
effect as the negotiations were still unfinished. 
However, on November 23, notwithstanding 
critics and censors, he evacuated Vera Cruz. 
The imperialistic party were against his action, 
and its opposition obliged him to seek the sup- 
port of the pacifist elements. Addressing him- 
self to this particular public, he declared him- 
self their friend. On October 25 he spoke at 
a meeting of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation : 

"Your role is to fight, not with canon, but 
according to the law. We have recently con- 
cluded with a great number of powers treaties 
of arbitration which forbid us to break off any 



178 President Wilson 

negotiation without having allowed a clear year 
to elapse from the date of the arbitration or 
enquiry. My prediction is that a light will il- 
luminate the difficulties, and that after a year 
there will be no reason to fight/' 

He was now well engaged in a pacifist cam- 
paign, and about to go so far that his acts 
would bind him. Undoubtedly his considera- 
tions were political. The legislative elections 
were fixed for December, 1914, and the Presi- 
dent had an extreme need to preserve his demo- 
cratic majority. To discourage the pacifists, 
to separate himself from them, could only spell 
defeat. This had to be kept in mind, and he 
acted in consequence. He did not forget the 
example of Cleveland's presidency. Cleveland 
was also a Democrat. And Cleveland had 
ruined himself by coming into collision with 
the democratic elements of his own party. 
Like Cleveland President Wilson had the firm 
resolve to govern with authority, but he was 
quite decided not to be broken in the same way. 

A strong section of American opinion in- 
sisted upon an increase of army and navy. 
President Wilson was not in favour of such 
measures. In the message of November 10 he 
declared himself in favour of "the small navy 
biir' put forward by his cabinet. In Decern- 



President Wilson and War 179 

ber, 19 14, in an address to Congress, he raised 
his voice against schemes of army reform. 
''We will not turn America into a camp," he 
said. ''We will not ask our young men to 
spend the best years of their lives in learning 
soldiering." A certain league for the limita- 
tion of armaments supported his policy. He 
thanked it in a public reply. A man charged 
with such high responsibilities can only be crit- 
icised with much prudence. But it must be said 
that President Wilson went too far. We are 
able to say it more freely because he himself 
was soon to regret the fact, and disavowed 
these words. They were unfortunate because 
they were so unsuitable to prepare the people 
of the United States for an eventuality rap- 
idly approaching. 

What were President Wilson's thoughts at 
this moment of his presidency? What were 
his intentions? Did he intend to avoid war at 
any price? He was suspected and accused. 
Mr. Roosevelt commenced a campaign in fa- 
vour of war. Mr. Morton Fullerton de- 
nounced Germany which coveted and threat- 
ened the two Americas. The President did 
not change his position. On February 6, 
191 5, to the great scandal of the AlHes in Eu- 
rope and the pro-Allies in America, he tele- 
graphed birthday greetings to the Emperor 



180 President Wilson 

William. Had he then elected — as people 
dared to write — in favour of the path of cow- 
ardice? No indeed, as events soon proved. 
He was cautiously waiting. He desired peace, 
not only because he had a horror of war, but 
also because it was necessary for the success 
of his reforms and for the maintenance of the 
unity and liberal ideas of his nation. He pas- 
sionately wished for peace with an anguish 
which overcame a will until then quite firm. 
And he allied himself closely, too closely, with 
those pacifists who alone were able to help him 
along a difficult road. He ceased to restrain 
his natural fire, and spoke as an apostle. 

"What a future is before us, my friends! 
The whole world is troubled. America is 
alone at peace. Of all the great powers of 
the world America is the only one to employ 
its power for the good of the people. Amer- 
ica is the only one to use its great character, 
its great force, in the service of peace and 
prosperity. Does it not seem probable that one 
day the world will turn towards America and 
say, 'You were right, we were wrong. We 
lost our heads, you kept yours' ?" 

This is not the language of a statesman, but 
of an enthusiast. We must never forget, 
however, that the Presidency of the Republic 



President Wilson and War 181 

of the United States is an office which makes 
its occupant partly a popular magistrate, partly 
a dictator. To hold the office well a man must 
be both one and the other, an ardent orator, a 
cold and resolute administrator. The tribune 
shines on the platform, the dictator in action. 
The office is difficult, and, if President Wilson 
is himself hard to understand, it is because he 
comprehends very well the nature of his 
duties. Sometimes passionate oratory over- 
whelms him, as in the present case. But the 
dictator does not sleep. President Wilson 
never fails — as even his opponents recognise 
— to take at the necessary moment any essen- 
tial decisions which will determine the future. 



VIII — Towards War: Deeds 



ONE of these moments now presented 
itself. At the beginning of 191 5 
American diplomacy was in an 
awkward situation. Continuous 
acts, sometimes on the part of England, some- 
times on that of Germany, infringed the regu- 
lations of international law. Germany placed 
all her food supplies under government con- 
trol. England irtstantly declared that such 
food supplies ceased to be a matter of private 
concern and became of public significance. 
Ships carrying cargoes of like nature would be 
conducted for examination and seizure into 
British ports. This was the first blow directed 
against international law. But the German 
counter-attack was graver still. In February, 
1915, Berlin announced that England was 
blockaded, and that consequently the maritime 
zone encompassing her became a ''war zone." 
If neutrals ventured into this area they must 
run the risks of their acts. The British de- 
cision threatened commercial interests, but the 
German decree threatened life itself. The dou- 
ble reply of President Wilson marked how 

182 



Towards War: Deeds 183 

clearly he realised the difference. He negoti- 
ated with Great Britain. The Note addressed 
to BerHn was an immediate summons. 

''If the commanders of German vessels of 
war should act on the presumption that the flag 
of the United States was not being used in good 
faith and should destroy on the high seas an 
American vessel or the lives of American citi- 
zens, it would be difficult for the Government 
of the United States to view the act in any 
other light than as an indefensible violation of 
neutral rights, which it would be very hard 
indeed to reconcile with the friendly relations 
now so happily subsisting between the two 
Governments. 

*'If such a deplorable situation should arise, 
the Imperial German Government can readily 
appreciate that the Government of the United 
States would be constrained to hold the Im- 
perial German Government to a strict account- 
ability for such acts of their naval authorities 
and to take any steps it might be necessary to 
take to safeguard American lives and property 
and to secure to American citizens the full en- 
joyment of their acknowledged rights on the 
high seas." 

Great Britain and Germany replied, and the 
double negotiation was being conducted with 
some asperity when German action intervened. 



184 President Wilson 

On May 8, 191 5, the Lusitania was torpedoed 
off the southern coast of Ireland. The Lusi- 
tania was one of those huge Hners which carry 
the aristocracies of America and Europe with 
so much comfort that their easy existence is 
scarcely troubled. She was torpedoed without 
warning, and amongst the drowned — eleven 
hundred in all — one hundred Americans per- 
ished. 

A cry of horror rose throughout America. 
This war she thought so far away, so beyond 
her purview, was attacking and wounding her. 
Her astonishment was as great as her anger. 
New York demanded the rupture of relations 
with Germany. The President's decision was 
awaited. War! Without question on that 
day he could have declared it. On that day, 
said many Americans, and from that day on 
any day the President was in a position to de- 
clare war. The nation would have followed 
him. Undoubtedly the shock was violent, and 
the incitement keen. But was it as lasting as it 
was sharp? Would the nation have followed 
him wholly and with unchangeableness, with 
the absolute devotion so necessary in the con- 
duct of such a struggle? Listen to the speech 
made by Professor Lowell of Harvard. *'Let 
us imagine that President Wilson had decided 
to launch us into war after the torpedoing of 



Towards War: Deeds 185 

the Liisitania. Could the people have stopped 
him ? No, because everything — amidst the uni- 
versal waving of flags — would have given place 
to excitement. Could President Wilson have 
consulted the nation? No, because events 
were moving too rapidly. He might have con- 
sulted Congress, but Congress is not the na- 
tion. And, even had he consulted the nation, 
under the circumstances what response would 
he have obtained? An emotion — for a nation 
passing through such a crisis is able to feel an 
emotion but unable to form an opinion. This 
emotion w^as war." * The President had in- 
deed the power, but had he the right? 

President Wilson almost certainly remem- 
bered that twenty years earlier, in 1898, an 
analogous catastrophe had plunged the United 
States into another war. The ironclad Maine 
had been sunk in a Cuban port then belonging 
to Spain. Without waiting an instant for re- 
flection or inquiry, the American public held 
Spain responsible for the loss of life. Presi- 
dent McKinley was swayed by the national 
feeling and declared war. In his history of 
the American people. President Wilson blames 
his predecessor. 'The war against Spain was 
inevitable and just," he wrote, ''but it should 

*Speech to the League to impose Peace. Boston Evening 
Transcript, March 7, 1916, 



186 President Wilson 

have been declared after reflection and after 
preparation." President McKinley allowed 
himself to be swept off his feet, and, in conse- 
quence, the war with Spain was longer, more 
difficult, and more costly than it should have 
been. ''This war was one of impulse,'' he wrote 
again, ''and it was clear to see how unprepared 
we were for a task abruptly undertaken. The 
United States Army consisted of no more than 
28,000 men, officers and soldiers. . . /' 

President Wilson did not intend to be swept 
off his feet. To submit to the contagion of an 
opinion influenced by passion was repugnant 
to him, appearing unworthy of his character 
and of his office. In May, 1915, the United 
States was in his opinion unprepared mate- 
rially as well as morally, and he did not wish 
to urge matters forward. 

Three days after the destruction of the 
Lusitania he spoke in public. His speech was 
an appeal for calmness. 

"The example of America must be a special 
example, and must be an example not merely 
of peace because it will not fight, but because 
peace is a healing and elevating influence of 
the world, and strife is not. There is such a 
thing as a man being too proud to fight; there 
is such a thing as a nation being so right that 



Towards War: Deeds 187 

it does not need to convince others by force 
that it is right." 

There is such a thing as a man being too 
proud to fight. . . . For no words has he been 
more often reproached. Friends of the En- 
tente saw in the phrase a want of courage, a 
cowardice hidden under the cloak of clever 
rhetoric, and, at the same time, a lack of spirit, 
a flattery and demagogic wheedling to attract 
the pacifists. Meanwhile the President pre- 
pared in perfect silence and complete solitude 
a Note to Germany. He worked alone upon it, 
and called together his Secretaries of State 
only to read w^hat had been already written. 

On May 13 he issued his reply. Dignified 
and firm, the whole of America approved it. 
The hand of a statesman was apparent, a man 
trained to arrive at the essential point of an 
argument, to define it, and to confine himself 
to it. President Wilson did not allow that 
merchant ships could be torpedoed without 
warning and without effort to rescue the 
crews. This he repeated, adding that no act 
or deed should be omitted by him to uphold the 
rights of his fellow citizens. Berlin answered 
immediately, but evasively, and raising quite 
another question : Was the Lusitania armed or 
unarmed? The evasion was a smart quibble, 
and likely to divide American opinion. Some 



188 President Wilson 

of the Secretaries of State weakened. They 
telephoned the President and sent him sug- 
gested replies. They received no answer.* 
Bryan, Secretary of State, resigned. The 
President, who had until then been careful 
to conciliate him and his followers person- 
ally, accepted the resignation. Quitting 
Washington, the head of the Senate passed 
twenty-five days at Cornish, taking counsel, it 
seemed, alone with Colonel House, his intimate 
agent, the eminence grise of a new Cardinal- 
Statesman. The President did not admit the 
German subterfuge. On June lo, he repeated 
his warning. He insisted upon reparation for 
the past and promises for the future. He ex- 
pressed himself with "a solemn insistence," 
^'hoping against hope" that there would be no 
need to repeat his protests. 

What would be the effect of these words? 
In America, as in Europe, the public com- 
menced to smile. To the President's Notes 
Berlin always returned a dilatory reply, and, 
under the cover of a tricky verbiage, continued 
an implacable war. In July, the Nebraskan, 
an American ship, was torpedoed. In August, 
the Arabic, belonging to Great Britain, was 

*These details have been taken from an energetic article 
in the North American Reznew, entitled "The Mystery of 
Woodrow Wilson" (September, 1917). 



Towards War: Deeds 189 

sent down, American lives being lost in the 
wreck. President Wilson's position became 
critical. To each German outrage he offered 
a protest, never allowing the law to lapse 
through lack of attention. Germany replied 
by a pretence of promises, sham excuses, sug- 
gestions as to enquiry, and always by brutal 
deeds. In September, 19 15, a German subma- 
rine torpedoed the Allan liner Hesperian one 
hundred and thirty miles west of Queenstown. 
Thus Germany defied America on the high 
seas. She behaved in the same manner on 
land, defying America on the very soil of the 
States. In their own land she endeavoured 
to stir up the Americans of German birth or 
origin. And this audacious attempt, of which 
we knew the existence in Europe although we 
only partially realised its gravity, rendered 
President Wilson's position tragic. The Ger- 
man terrorists blew up bridges, burnt fac- 
tories, and fomented strikes. In August, 19 15, 
whilst the President negotiated, and Berlin 
counter-balanced his Notes with torpedoing 
and murder, the World, a New York journal, 
published authentic documents revealing the 
underground German plots. Even diplomatists 
were compromised, including a military at- 
tache, a naval attache, and the Austrian am- 
bassador, Dr. Dumba. The government insti- 



190 President Wilson 

tuted proceedings, seized papers, and discov- 
ered deeds so grave, so threatening for the 
United States, that the knowledge of them was 
kept from the pubHc and silence decided upon.* 
At the same moment the Mexican troubles re- 
vived, and President Wilson was again con- 
fronted with the fantastic activity of those he 
was henceforward to consider the enemies of 
his country, of peace itself, and of all human 
order. Germans were found in the Mexican 
irregular bands. Their military knowledge 
gave them authority, and they w^ere often in 
command. They had received instructions in- 
cessantly to endeavour to provoke a conflict 
between Mexico and the United States. The 
task was easy. They led their bands to the 
American holdings, encouraging their follow- 
ers to pillage, and, if possible, to murder. 
Many Americans were killed. 

Thus, whilst Europe became slowly engulfed 
in the horror of monotonous slaughter, the 
war insinuated itself afar, and reached the 
New World. What was President Wilson 
able to do? The whole nation had made him 
the guardian of its honour, and this honour, 
as it rested in his hands, was being flouted. 

*These papers, or at least some of them, were published in 
September, 1917, They reveal the frightful work of German 
corruption. 



Towards War: Deeds 191 

He was roughly told so. He disregarded the 
outrages, but, better than any one else, he knew 
how bad the situation was. Should he sud- 
denly commence a more violent policy, declar- 
ing war against Germany and Mexico, and in 
the United States coercing ten or twenty mil- 
lions of German-Americans, Irish, Jews, and 
Austrians? Had he the strength? To defend 
the interests of an immense country, inhabited 
by one hundred millions of men, he had the dis- 
position of an army of sixty thousand! Presi- 
dent Wilson has never uttered a word concern- 
ing the anguish and bitterness of his task. 
However, we can form some idea of it. 

There was another aspect. The President 
was invested with immense, and, to a certain 
degree, almost illimitable powers. But, on the 
other hand, these powers were narrowly lim- 
ited and almost valueless. They were limited 
to a duration of four years, of which three 
were almost expired. Would he be re-elected ? 
Yes, perhaps; no, perhaps. To initiate the 
most formidable action he had before him some 
twelve or thirteen months of a precarious 
power, a power already diminished by the ap- 
proaching close of his term of office. Human 
institutions, political constructions raised by 
men, are in themselves essentially weak. All 
are defective and feeble in some respect or 



192 President Wilson 

other. Nature has given men the need of gov- 
ernment but refused them the instinct of gov- 
erning. She leaves them groping, trying to 
supply their deficiencies by artifice. Artifice or 
heredity. Artifice in the form of an electorate. 
And whatever may be the advantages of an 
electorate it can only create a fluctuating 
pov^er, returning from time to time (four or 
seven years, it does not matter which period) 
to interregnums and crises introduced into the 
constitution by the people themselves. And 
the stronger and more effectual the created 
power, so more perilous are these eclipses, so 
more profound the crises of their refashion- 
ing and the more harmful a return of the 
crises. The Republic of the United States, in 
other respects so young and brilliant, has its 
weak spot, its heel of Achilles. 

Assuredly President Wilson had in his mind 
the crisis which would interrupt and possibly 
terminate his period of office. His adversaries 
reproached him for it. They accused him, to 
state the fact in crude terms, of considering 
his re-election rather than the honour of the 
United States, and of endeavouring to escape 
war in order to gain the goodwill of the masses. 
These imputations can be disregarded. In so 
solemn a story let only grave thoughts be 
found. We believe that President Wilson was 



Towards War: Deeds 193 

not able to keep from his calculations the real- 
ity of a crisis which would diminish his author- 
ity at the moment he had an extreme need for 
its unimpaired use. Responsible leaders must 
not be judged too quickly. Trouble must be 
taken to estimate the task before them. Con- 
sider Wilson's problem. He was confronted 
by the commencement of a civil war. He fore- 
saw an imminent crisis. Germany was against 
him everywhere, on the sea, in Mexico, even 
in the United States. He had no army. Not- 
ing these aspects of the situation, dare we 
blame his prudence? 

Prudence did not prevent him from taking 
action. His first wish was for internal peace. 
Without taking counsel with Congress, he ex- 
pelled from the United States those diplomatic 
felons who had been accredited to him. The 
Austrian Dumba and the two German captains 
Boy-Ed and Von Papen were put outside the 
frontier. This action did not turn him aside 
from the negotiations he had commenced. He 
desired to obtain German recognition in writ- 
ing of the right of neutrals to navigate the 
seas without running peril of death. Pain- 
fully, and after much insistence, he obtained 
what he wanted. Germany would not torpedo 
mail steamers without warning and necessary 
precaution. This engagement was dated Sep- 



194< President Wilson 

tember ist. She regretted the torpedoing of 
the Arabic, held herself ready to indemnify the 
victims, and announced that instructions had 
been given "so stringent that the recurrence 
of similar incidents is considered out of the 
question" (dated October 5th). She promised 
to spare the merchant vessels in the Mediter- 
ranean (dated January 7, 1916). Unques- 
tionably these promises were only Notes an- 
swering Notes. But what more did President 
Wilson want? He was seeking to safeguard 
a principle, to maintain intact the liberty of 
his ulterior measures, of his protests and acts. 
In this he succeeded. 

Principles saved and agitators expelled, 
President Wilson, signifying his will, main- 
tained a straight road amidst grave disorder. 
In December, 191 5, according to custom, he 
sent his annual message to Congress. He ex- 
pressed himself in strong terms, and de- 
nounced American pro-Germans. 

''I am sorry to say that the gravest threats 
against our national peace and safety have 
been uttered within our own borders. There 
are citizens of the United States, I blush to 
admit, born under other flags, but welcomed 
under our generous naturalisation laws to the 
full freedom and opportunity of America, who 



Towards War: Deeds 195 

have poured the poison of disloyalty into the 
very arteries of our national life; who have 
sought to bring the authority and good name 
of our Government into contempt, to destroy 
our industries wherever they thought it effec- 
tive for their vindictive purposes to strike at 
them, and to debase our politics to the uses of 
foreign intrigue. Their number is not great 
as compared with the whole number of those 
sturdy hosts by which our nation has been 
enriched in recent generations out of virile 
foreign stocks; but it is great enough to have 
brought deep disgrace upon us and to have 
made it necessary that we should promptly 
make use of processes of law by which we may 
be purged of their corrupt distempers. 

''America never witnessed anything like this 
before. It never dreamed it possible. . . . Be- 
cause it was incredible we made no preparation 
for it. But the ugly and incredible thing has 
actually come about and we are without ade- 
quate Federal laws to deal with it. ... I urge 
you to enact such laws. . . . Such creatures 
of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be 
crushed out." 

He asked for further laws. Military train- 
ing, which in former years had failed to inter- 
est him, now aroused his attention. "It would 



196 President Wilson 

be shameful," he remarked, ''if I had learned 
nothing in fourteen months. 

'War is a thing of disciplined might. If 
our citizens are ever to fight effectively upon 
a sudden summons, they must know how mod- 
ern fighting is done, and what to do when the 
summons comes to render themselves immedi- 
ately available and immediately effective. 
And the Government must be their servant in 
this matter, must supply them with the train- 
ing they need to take care of themselves and 
of it. . . . They must be fitted to play the 
great role in the world, and particularly in this 
hemisphere, for which they are qualified by 
principle and by chastened ambition to play. 

"It is with these ideals in mind that the plans 
of the Department of War for more adequate 
national defence were conceived which will be 
laid before you, and which I urge you to sanc- 
tion and put into effect as soon as they can be 
properly scrutinised and discussed.'* 

Such a message but slightly resembles the 
harangues of the preceding year. President 
Wilson had recovered his energy for reform 
and exhibited it at full strength. 

In the meanwhile the German terrorists con- 
tinued their plots. In Pennsylvania they burnt 
granaries. At Bethlehem and Topeka they 
blew up munition factories. In Ohio they fo- 



Towards War: Deeds 197 

merited and provoked strikes and riots. In 
New York Harbour a merchant vessel was 
scuttled. In Mexico they supplied Huerta and 
Villa, and their troops, with money. In the 
United States even they organised and armed 
Germans who had not been able to mobilise at 
their country's call. They prepared a raid 
upon Canada. The American police were 
aware of the plot and prevented it. But a fire, 
the act of an incendiary, completely destroyed 
the Canadian parliament buildings. The fever 
and fury of the Old World was injuring this 
New World, so proud of its youth and hon- 
esty. Peace and American unity were being 
broken up. President Wilson decided to act, 
and, in the popular phrase, to take the bull by 
the horns. He announced his intention of con- 
ducting an oratorical campaign in favour of 
the measures dealing with military training. 
Pie would deliver his first speech in that part of 
the States almost wholly peopled by citizens 
of German origin. 

It was time. Even his own party had com- 
menced to rebel. At the close of January, 
19 16, the Democrats seemed disposed to delay 
the vote upon the military training measures. 
Bryan ostentatiously asserted that he was not 
joining the tour. The President left Wash- 



198 President Wilson 

ington, and the whole country watched a de- 
parture of fateful consequence. If the Presi- 
dent failed there would be an end of his meas- 
ures, of his government, of his career. Once 
more he would become a college professor, and 
another would occupy his seat. 

To follow in the press the various stages of 
his career gives a curious series of pictures. 
We are able to perceive the immensity, the 
want of cohesion, and, at the same time, the 
greatness of the American people. On the 
29th, he was at Pittsburgh, the iron city. The 
men who worked there were making money, 
and had other things to do than to listen to 
speeches. The President was received with 
indifference, and his meeting was but a partial 
success. On the 31st, he was at Milwaukee. 
This city, whose name is unknown in France, 
is as large as Lyons. The population numbers 
over 400,000 inhabitants, the majority of for- 
eign extraction. Milwaukee is a German town, 
and the President stopped there by design. 
He arrived with a guard, a rare occurrence in 
the United States. Horse militia escorted his 
carriage, a line of police separating him from 
the crowd. In a word, he defied his audience. 
Then he spoke. At the outset he glorified 
American patriotism. "America first!" he 



Towards War: Deeds 199 

cried, and, as the public applauded, he tackled 
the question of the moment. 

'In the first place, I know that you are de- 
pending upon me to keep this nation out of 
war. So far I have done that. And I pledge 
you my word that, God helping me, I will, if it 
is possible." 

A burst of acclamation interrupted his 
words. He waited, then continued : 

*'But you have laid another duty on me. 
You have bidden me see that nothing stains or 
impairs the honour of the United States. And 
that is a matter not within my control. That 
depends on what others do, not upon what the 
Government of the United States does, and 
therefore there may be, at any moment, a time 
when I cannot both preserve the honour and 
the peace of the United States. Do not exact 
of me an impossible and contradictory thing, 
but stand ready and insist that everybody who 
represents you should stand ready to provide 
the means for maintaining the honour of the 
United States." 

Again he was cheered, but the acclamation 
seemed less spontaneous and enthusiastic. 

'*Do not deceive yourself as to where the 
colours of your flag came from. Those lines 
of red are lines of blood, nobly and unselfishly 
shed by men who loved the liberty of their 



200 President Wilson 

fellow-men more than they loved their own 
lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should 
have to use the blood of America to freshen 
the colour of that flag, but if it should ever be 
necessary again to assert the majesty and in- 
tegrity of those ancient and honourable prin- 
ciples that flag will be coloured once more, and 
in being coloured will be glorified and puri- 
fied/' 

More applause. The proceedings passed off 
becomingly. The President had dared to come, 
and that was much. 

He left Milwaukee in his campaign train, 
which stopped from station to station, allow- 
ing time for a welcome, a few words, and a 
popular greeting. Under such circumstances 
a slightly rough familiarity is to be expected, 
and does not shock. Mrs. Wilson (the Presi- 
dent had recently remarried) accompanied her 
husband, and the crowd was insistent to see 
the newly married wife, who was reputed a 
beauty. A voice cried from the crowd : 

''Where is Mrs. Wilson? Stand back, Mr. 
President, so that we may have a look at her !" 

"There she is," replied the President. ''She 
is more pleasant to look at than I am." 

"That's true enough." 

On the evening of the same day he was at 
Chicago. The Germans are numerous there, 



Towards War: Deeds 201 

and the police were watchful. On February 
2nd he spoke at Kansas City to an audience of 
15,000. Kansas City is the centre of a great 
agricultural district. Its inhabitants, sepa- 
rated from the two oceans by chains of moun- 
tains, are entirely engrossed in their cattle 
breeding and harvests. They ignore world 
problems. To them there is no difference be- 
tween a King of Italy and a Prince of Siam. 
They know only the land, their land. Subma- 
rine warfare disturbs them not a jot. Before 
these men President Wilson delivered one of 
his most striking addresses. He spoke of the 
vast world in which they were so little inter- 
ested. He described ports they had never seen. 
But their corn, and the meat of their beasts, 
went to these ports, were loaded in ships and 
carried to England and France. If these mar- 
kets w^ere not open, prices could not be so good. 
The ships therefore required care and protec- 
tion. This, amongst many others, was one of 
the duties of the President of the United 
States. But where would his authority be if 
he had not behind him an awakened people 
prepared to lend him their aid? 

''You are counting upon me to see to it that 
the rights of the citizens of the United States, 
wherever they might be, are respected by 



202 President Wilson 

everybody. . . . And I have come out to ask 
you what there was behind me in this task. 

"You know the lawyers speak of the law 
having a sanction back of it. The Judge, as 
he sits on his bench, has something back of 
him. . . . But when I, as your spokesman and 
representative, utter a judgment with regard 
to the rights of the United States in its rela- 
tions to other nations, what is the sanction? 
What is the compulsion? . . . 

'It is necessary, my fellow citizens, that I 
should come and ask you this question. . . . 
There may come a time — I pray God it may 
never come, but it may, in spite of everything 
we do, come upon us, and come of a sudden — 
when I shall have to ask: 'I have had my say. 
Who stands back of me? Where is the force 
by which the majesty and right of the United 
States are to be maintained and asserted?' 

"I have seen editorials written in more than 
one paper of the United States sneering at the 
number of notes that were being written from 
the State Department to the foreign govern- 
ments, and asking, 'Why does not the Gov- 
ernment act?' And in those same papers I 
have seen editorials against the preparation 
to do anything whatever effective if these notes 
are not regarded. ... It may be the temper 



Towards War: Deeds 203 

of some editorial offices, but it is not the tem- 
per of the people of the United States. 

''I came out upon this errand from Wash- 
ington. ... I have been thrilled by the ex- 
periences of these few days, and I shall go back 
to Washington and smile at anybody who tells 
me that the United States is not wide awake. 
But, gentlemen, crowds at the stations, multi- 
tudes in great audience halls, cheers for the 
Government, the display — the ardent display 
as from the heart — of the emblem of our na- 
tion, the Stars and Stripes, only express the 
spirit of the nation; it does not express the 
organised force of the nation. 

"... The Government asks you to give it 
arms. The very essentials of the American 
tradition dictate our demand. The constitu- 
tion of each state forbids its assembly to re- 
strain the right of carrying arms, a right which 
belongs to each of us. The founders of our 
institutions understood from the first that the 
strength of a nation is to be found in its 
homes. I do not say the moral strength alone. 
I say the material strength as well. 

"They understood that each man has the 
right not only to have a vote, but also to have 
— if he wanted it — a gun. . . . What we are 
asking from you is this: that the nation may 



204 President Wilson 

hold arms ready to give to those who, in the 
case happening, may have to defend it." 

When he had spoken the President said to 
the crowd, "I ask you to let me finish my speech 
by singing with you 'America.' " 

Fifteen thousand men, each waving accord- 
ing to the American custom a little American 
flag, cheered their leader's suggestion. The 
President, we are told in the San of Febru- 
ary 3rd, stood in a dramatic attitude, his left 
hand on his breast, his head thrown back as 
he sang. When the second verse had died 
away the crowd wished to sing it again. And 
Mr. Wilson led their voices with outstretched 
arms. 

He then travelled towards those southern 
states which formed his native soil. He loved 
the warm atmosphere of the south. At St. 
Louis he spoke before 18,000 hearers. Per- 
haps he was a trifle excited by the events of 
the tour. The fact remains that his speech 
was a surprise. No propagandist in favour of 
the measures for military training, not even 
Mr. Roosevelt, had expressed himself so 
strongly. Speaking of the navy, "Do you real- 
ise its task?" he asked. "Plave you ever con- 
sidered the enormous extent of our coasts, 
from Panama to Alaska, from Panama to 
Maine? No navy in the world has so difficult 



Towards War: Deeds 205 

a task, so heavy a defence. The navy ought, 
in my judgment, to be incomparably the great- 
est navy in the world." 

What would Great Britain have said, had 
she not been so occupied elsewhere? The 
18,000 auditors roared with enthusiasm. But 
the press discussed the speech with astonish- 
ment. It is time, remarked a Republican or- 
gan, for President Wilson to return to the 
calming influence of Washington. 

He returned to find w^arfare rather than 
peace. The politicians, and — aggravating ad- 
dition — some of the foremost of his own party, 
were in open rebellion. The question was no 
longer one of secret malevolence, of a tardy 
vote. Direct action was being initiated, and 
this included an examination of the whole 
course of the diplomatic negotiations concern- 
ing the submarine war. The essential pre- 
rogative of the American presidency was being 
attacked. 

Events had taken a fresh turn since 19 16. 
Great Britain had armed its merchant ships in 
self-defence, and some of these armed mer- 
chantmen had entered and remained in Ameri- 
can ports. Germany at once protested, on the 
ground that these armed ships should be 
treated in the same manner as warships. 



206 President Wilson 

President Wilson refused to admit the conten- 
tion, but his reply did not close the discussion. 
The German-Americans declared that Ger- 
many had the right to sink without warning 
ships armed against that nation, and that 
American citizens who embarked on such ships 
should be warned of the risk, a risk they un- 
dertook alone. Many Americans found these 
views sensible and just, and were troubled by 
the silent obstinacy with which President Wil- 
son followed another policy. Unceasingly the 
German agents worked to develop this uneasi- 
ness and bring it to a head. They did not have 
much difficulty in making friends amongst the 
six hundred members of Congress.* On Feb- 
ruary 24, 19 1 6, a kind of panic seized the 
assembled representatives. A report was 
spread that the President had spoken during 
his tour in favour of armed intervention. 
Suddenly it was realised that war was an in- 
evitable catastrophe. The representatives ap- 

*German policy has always endeavoured to please Con- 
gress at the expense of the President. A pro-German news- 
paper wrote on April 21, 1916, "We are the free citizens of 
a free republic, in which the government, by right and by 
law, is not our master but our paid servant. . . . We have 
no sovereign to lead us by right or divine inspiration. We 
will no longer tolerate a dictator. ... To assure the unity 
and solidarity of public action the President must take 
counsel with Congress before deciding a line of conduct 
which can lead either to peace or war." 



Towards War: Deeds 207 

peared willing to act in conjunction with the 
Committee of Foreign Affairs, and to take a 
strong hand. A resolution was drafted for- 
bidding Americans to embark upon armed 
ships. 

On that day Germany almost conquered 
President Wilson, but on that day the singular 
temper of the man was revealed. Behind him 
was an uncertain country, before him an 
aroused Congress. He did not vacillate for an 
instant. The Chairman of the Committee of 
Foreign Affairs presented himself, with two 
important representatives, to acquaint the 
President of the intention of the two Houses. 
President Wilson refused to receive them, al- 
lowing it to be understood that a letter, then 
being put together, would give his reply. This 
letter was addressed to Senator Stone, who 
had already expressed his uneasiness and his 
doubts to the President. 

''No nation, no group of nations, has the 
right while war is in progress to alter or dis- 
regard the principles which all nations have 
agreed upon in mitigation of the horrors and 
sufferings of war, and if the clear rights of 
American citizens should ever unhappily be 
abridged or denied by any such action, w^e 
should, it seems to me, have in honour no 
choice as to what our own course should be. 



208 President Wilson 

"For my own part, I cannot consent to any 
abridgement of the rights of American citizens 
in any respect. ... To forbid our people to 
exercise their rights for fear we might be 
called upon to vindicate them would be a deep 
humiliation indeed. ... It would be a delib- 
erate abdication of our hitherto proud position 
as spokesmen, even amidst the turmoil of war, 
for the law and the right. . . . 

''What we are contending for in this matter 
is of the very essence of the things that have 
made America a sovereign nation. She can- 
not yield them without conceding her own im- 
potency as a nation, and making virtual sur- 
render of her independent position among the 
nations of the world. 

''I am speaking, my dear Senator, in deep 
solemnity, without heat, with a clear conscious- 
ness of the high responsibilities of my office, 
and as your sincere and devoted friend. If 
we should unhappily differ, we shall differ as 
friends, but where issues so momentous as 
these are involved we must, just because we 
are friends, speak our minds without reser- 
vation." 

The American people has a highly developed 
sense of authority, but a very feeble instinct 
of parliamentary manners. It applauded the 
President and hooted the Representatives. A 



Towards War: Deeds 209 

study of the press clearly gives this impres- 
sion. With the exception of certain pro-Ger- 
man papers, which denounced President Wil- 
son's ''secret diplomacy," the press generally 
approved of their leader's stroke and blamed 
what it described as ''a parliamentary rebel- 
lion." The President was appealing to the 
people, they said. Congress awaited the mas- 
ter's voice. The President had whip in hand. 

"Let us recognise," wrote the Sun, which 
was not always favourable to the Adminis- 
tration, ''that however badly our affairs may 
be administered by a single man and his advis- 
ors, they W'Ould be administered much worse 
if they were subject to the digressions of 583 
senators and representatives. What at the pres- 
ent moment is unsatisfactory would become in- 
tolerable in the future. Instead of mistakes 
we should have chaos. . . . There is not a man 
of sound sense, who, after Wednesday's ex- 
hibition, can imagine for an instant that our 
foreign affairs would be better conducted if 
they were under the influences of which we 
have just witnessed an example. . . . Presi- 
dent Wilson's bitterest critic could not wish to 
substitute in his place a Congress united in 
plenary sitting." 

Public anger was so strong that the repre- 
sentatives abruptly ended their agitation and 



210 President Wilson 

ran to shelter. President Wilson, considering 
them humiliated, consented to hear them. On 
the 25th he received the three emissaries he 
had shut his door to on the 24th. The inter- 
view was curt. 

*'I intend to see this thing through," said 
the President. 

"The country is of a different opinion/' re- 
plied the emissaries. 

''Events will justify me.'' 

The President's victory lacked one important 
factor. It had not been sanctioned by a vote. 
Disturbing rumours were spread. It was said 
that the President had stated that if the United 
States entered the war they would shorten the 
conflict and thus render a great service to 
civilisation. This assertion was contradicted, 
but the denials did not end the matter. The 
President wished to close the discussion. He 
interviewed an influential representative. 

'Tor some months I have struggled to keep 
the United States off the edge of a precipice. 
My task has been immensely increased by 
members of Congress, who have not been 
aware of the whole facts of the situation. My 
hands must be free. This resolution — which 
I did not desire — has not been the subject of a 
vote. I wish it to be discussed and rejected." 

He was given ample satisfaction. By 64 



Tox)cards War: Deeds 211 

votes to 14, and by 2y6 to 142 the Senate and 
the House of Representatives threw out the 
resolution forbidding Americans to travel on 
merchantmen armed against submarines. The 
Germans had lost their last hope. 

On March 24, 19 16, the Sussex, which 
crossed the Channel between Folkestone and 
Dieppe, was torpedoed without warning. The 
vessel was a mailboat carrying passengers. 
Amongst the Americans on board were Pro- 
fessor Baldwin, one of President Wilson's col- 
leagues at Princeton, and his daughter, who 
was seriously injured. The Professor sent the 
President a personal telegram. 

"An American woman travelling within her 
right, carrying an American passport, struck 
down on the Sussex, and now hovering be- 
tween life and death, demands reparation for 
this attempt upon the lives and liberties of 
Americans." 

America was thrilled. Germany had clearly 
broken the promise given on October 5th, and 
America found herself in the position of rup- 
tured relations so plainly foreseen and defined 
by her President. National opinion asserted 
itself with much energy. Official reports 
showed that public feeling w^as shared at the 
White House. Fifteen days were given to 



212 President Wilson 

Germany for an explanation. On April lO 
Germany replied that the Sussex had been sunk 
by an English mine. But the facts were be- 
yond argument. The track of the torpedo had 
been seen, and fragments had been recovered. 
President Wilson shut himself up, and, for 
eight days, worked with his private advisors. 
On April 19 he summoned Congress. With- 
out a doubt this step was determined by serious 
constitutional considerations. The Constitu- 
tion of the United States gives the President 
the right to conduct negotiations, but reserves 
to Congress the right to declare war. It is, 
however, often difficult to trace a clear line be- 
tween the last act of negotiations and the first 
act of war. President Wilson found himself 
in a position of many alternatives. Without 
relinquishing his prerogatives he wished to 
make the Congress a responsible witness of the 
action he was preparing. ''The patience of 
the United States is exhausted," he announced. 
''Unless the Imperial Government should now 
immediately declare and eif ect an abandonment 
of its present methods of warfare against pas- 
senger and freight vessels, the Government 
can have no choice but to sever diplomatic re- 
lations with the Government of the Germail 
Empire altogether." The President spoke 



Towards War: Deeds 213 

coldly, quietly, and impressively. Senators 
and Representatives listened with the gravest 
attention. At his last word they rose in mark 
of approbation, not as a body but slowly, one 
by one, and without enthusiasm. 

In BerHn Ambassador Gerard handed a 
peremptory note to the German Government, 
which, after a few days' silence, replied and 
gave way. The Germans would sink merchant 
ships only after proper warning and the safety 
of the crews. However, the Government took 
care not to pledge the future. It demanded 
that the British Government should also ob- 
serve the rules of war with regard to block- 
ades. It reserved liberty to act should the Gov- 
ernment of the United States of America not 
succeed in obtaining from its adversary equal 
concessions. President Wilson replied quickly 
and concisely. He acknowledged the promise, 
adding that he expected its "scrupulous exe- 
cution." This would avert the chief danger 
of a rupture of relations, he stated in a curious 
phrase. As to the bargain the German Govern- 
ment were endeavouring to strike, he energeti- 
cally refused to entertain the idea. 

''The respect due to American citizens on 
the high seas ought not in any manner or 
degree to be subject to the conduct of other 



214 President Wilson 

governments. . . . The responsibility in this 
matter is personal, not joint; absolute, not rela- 
tive." 

This was the last word in the dialogue. 



IX — Towards War: Doctrines 

THE President had overcome the 
Kaiser. The American people cele- 
brated the ''Sussex pledge" as a na- 
tional victory. They wanted peace, 
but they loved prestige. They were happy in 
having one with the other. The President had 
always appeared as a man of peace; he re- 
mained ''the man who kept us out of war." 
But no one would be able to say that he was the 
man of a humiliating peace. The nation was 
thus satisfied with itself and with its head. 

The satisfaction was entirely popular. Some 
one, without doubt, did not share it, and that 
person was the President himself. Measuring 
his victory, he was aware of its limits. The 
German chancellory had given way, but with 
a formal reserve. It was able at any moment 
to perjure itself or to withdraw its pledge. 
The spring of 191 5 had produced a tragic sur- 
prise — the torpedoing of the Lusifania. The 
spring of 1916 had not been without a similar 
incident — the torpedoing of the Sussex. What 
surprise had the spring of 1917? And that 
surprise might come even sooner. Much was 

215 



216 President Wilson 

possible. Like a clear sky suddenly shrouded 
in fog, the vast space between Germany and 
the United States had in an instant become a 
perilous zone. Submarines on the water, con- 
spiracy on land, diplomatic intrigue in Mexico, 
all were equally able to cause war. How could 
it be avoided? 

There was no longer time. Silently but 
actually the war had already attacked the 
United States, introducing innumerable trou- 
bles. The moral unity of the country had been 
broken, the economic life overthrown. Whilst 
some were enriched others were being impov- 
erished. Thus were strikes and social crises 
fomented. Reforms half-planned wxre inter- 
rupted. The situation called for the radical 
recasting of the military system, and, after the 
creation of a great fleet the creation of a great 
army. This European conflagration they had 
at first considered so far away was gradually 
drawing nearer. It had surrounded them. 
They were being held within its fire. "This 
war," the President had said a few months 
earlier, ''is the last the United States will be 
able to avoid being dragged into." But the 
United States was being dragged into it. The 
American people, still unconscious of their 
peril, felt deeply that they had the right and the 
duty to intervene, to arbitrate a peace by every 



Towards War: Doctrines 217 

force a great nation can dispose of, in order 
to assure the future against the return of such 
a catastrophe. 

From that time the idea of intervention occu- 
pied the imagination of the American people. 
They knew neither the moment nor the man- 
ner. But they were sure that history destined 
them to act as peacemakers and reformers in 
unhappy Europe. Upon this point opinion 
agrees. A few, not so numerous as ardent, 
cried, ''Let us intervene with arms and defend 
the right." Others said, "If we intervene we 
shall not be able to arbitrate the peace, so do 
not let us intervene." But all thought, ''peace 
will be our doing." Upon that point all were 
in complete accord. 

In May, 1916, many newspapers, interpret- 
ing the public view, reproached the President 
for his lack of action. Why did he stop after 
his success? Why did he not make use of such 
an excellent opportunity? If he proposed him- 
self as arbitrator the belligerents would listen 
to him. The President was better informed. 
He knew that the belligerents would not listen 
to him. He remained silent, reflecting upon the 
new task events were preparing for him. 

His reflections were mingled with that pru- 
dence we have seen from the commencement. 
He was pressed to intervene. The conse- 



218 President Wilson 

quences of such an act had to be well consid- 
ered. Intervention would bring the war still 
closer. At the extreme end of intervention 
was war, which the President saw always 
nearer and more threatening. How could his 
people enter the war united and enthusiastic? 

United — that was the first necessity. Presi- 
dent Wilson had been watching for two years, 
and the same policy had to be continued. Be- 
tween Germans, French, English and Russians 
he would make no choice. He could show no 
personal inclination towards any of the foreign 
causes. He surveilled himself constantly, al- 
though there was no question of his own feel- 
ings. He was for the Entente and against the 
Empires. But he forbad himself to show this 
feeling. If he entered the war it must be for 
reasons and new principles which would not 
run counter to the passions of any American. 

Enthusiastic — enthusiasm is necessary if 
democracies are to act. President Wilson 
knew the American people. He knew that the 
nation was allied, in spite of its youth, with old 
Christian and revolutionary movements of Eu- 
rope. Puritans and persecuted Huguenots 
were its first ancestors. The ideas and the men 
of the eighteenth century gave it freedom. 
The exiles of 1848 (a great number German 
republicans) asked a refuge of it. The Amer- 



Towards War: Doctrines 219 



ican people has an instinct and desire for noble 
causes which excite and arouse it. The Presi- 
dent knew this. *'I would sooner sacrifice," 
he declared in one of his popular speeches, ''a 
part of our territory than a part of our ideal." 
A humanist liberalism is the true religion of 
the American people. Awaken it to this cry, 
appeal to it for the defence of such a doctrine, 
and the nation will give its consent to the sacri- 
fice. An illustrious master, Charles W. Eliot 
of Harvard, undertook this crusade. Human- 
ity is in danger, he declared. If Prussianism 
triumphs the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon 
world are lost. The victorious element will 
make all conform to its own civilisation, and, 
setting aside all hoped for reforms, and those 
already commenced, will militarise their insti- 
tutions. The Anglo-Saxon world must unite to 
gain salvation. The United States must enter 
into alliance with Great Britain and France 
and fight by their sides. Other public men pre- 
sented the question in a different form, but 
their tendency was the same. The Republic of 
the United States, they said, is based upon 
peace and can only develop itself in a world 
of peace. The Prussian state, based upon war, 
invites humanity to a new order of domination 
by war. The United States must oppose this 
order, this Prussian system, by another order, 



220 President Wilson 

the system of Peace. Such is the cause, at once 
ideal and practical, of the American people. A 
league was established to expound it — The 
World League to Enforce Peace. It extolled 
arbitration and enquiry before conflict. But it 
insisted — and in this respect it differed from 
the ordinary pacifists — upon the necessity of a 
coercive international force, a union of all the 
nations of the world, to restrain by force any 
nation revolting against the general concert. 
Such ideas have taken a strong hold of the 
American imagination because they present 
many analogies with the constitution of the 
United States. The individual states are in- 
deed free, but they are united by a federal 
power which determines the diverse interests, 
and which represents and guards the common 
interests. 'The principle of this world organ- 
isation [said one of the League's orators] 
must be the same as that on which the govern- 
ment of the United States has been based. 
When our ancestors founded it the States of 
New Jersey and of Virginia abolished their 
separate navies. ... It is the destiny of the 
United States to further this idea, for the 
United States are themselves the greatest 
league for peace that history has acquaintance 
with." Perhaps the example given is a spe- 
cial case. It is rash to identify the European 



Towards War: Doctrines 221 

states, as old-fashioned and vehement as reli- 
gious sects, and these young states which have 
grown upon the American prairies. But there 
is at least the appearance of an example which 
gives life to the theory.* 

Mr. Taft, a former President, became presi- 
dent of the League. (We must think of M. 
Loubet to establish an analogy.) Some jurists 
and university men of importance assisted him. 
The League was a success. An American re- 
view, the Outlook, observed that the single ex- 
pression of its name wonderfully assisted the 
propaganda. The World League to Enforce 
Peace. The supporters of unity pronounced 
the word ''world" with emphasis. The realists 
insisted on the word "enforce." The senti- 
mentalists strongly accentuated the final word 
"peace." The people of the United States felt 
at this moment the need to serve an idealistic 
cause. Their wealth was prodigious, and it 
w^as good to give, for their gifts in comparison 
with their gains wxre nothing. Reproaches 
for this increase of wealth came from all the 
European belligerents, from the Allies as well 
as from the Central Powers. The people of 

*M. Maxime Leroy, in his recent book on La Societe des 
Nations has indicated in detail how American experience has 
confirmed and realised the theories enunciated by the League 
and President Wilson. 



222 President Wilson 

the United States suffered this reproach with 
impatience. They considered it unjust. They 
wished to prove to the world that they could 
renounce as well as profit, could spend as well 
as gain. They desired also — in the more edu- 
cated sections of society if not amongst the 
masses — to prove by their acts that the whole 
of civilisation had not been dishonoured by 
the European catastrophe, that one nation at 
least, and that nation the United States, had 
not extinguished its hopes, and that Prussia 
had not gained the day against humanity. 
The League corresponded sufficiently to the 
needs of the people, defining a human cause, 
an American cause, a cause that America as 
an armed missionary might perhaps have to 
defend by force. This league satisfied the need 
of the American people to assert at one and 
the same time their idealism and their strength. 
For May 2y, 19 16, the League arranged 
a conference. President Wilson was sounded. 
Would he appear and speak ? He accepted the 
invitation. 

The origins of President Wilson's system 
of pacifism are not far to seek either in his 
past career or in his written works. He has 
been called a late disciple of the eighteenth- 
century philosophers. This is not exact, for. 



Towards War: Doctrines 223 

in politics, his ideas tend to realism and author- 
ity. He has also been described as a disciple 
of Kant. This too is inexact, his ideas are 
practical, and he is not a moralist. But the 
United States have on one side been influenced 
by the eighteenth century, whilst on the other 
they themselves influenced that dying century 
and the Revolution. From these facts spring 
many relationships and the constant possibili- 
ties of confusion. A French writer has en- 
deavoured to show that President Wilson has 
been inspired by Kant.* It would be more 
true to say that President Wilson inspired 
Kant, for the principles of American policy 
which he interprets were known to Kant and 
his time. Their influence is clear in his ''Meta- 
physik der Sitten" (''Metaphysic of Ethics") 
and his "Project for Perpetual Peace." t 

"In a Congress of many states," wrote Kant, 
"the question is one of an arbitrary union, dis- 
soluble at any time, and not a union which 
(like that of the United States of America) 
would be founded on a public constitution, and 
therefore indissoluble. In this manner might 
be formed an institution which would enable 
men to decide international interests accord- 

*Revue des Deux-Mondes, February 15, 191 7, "Kant et M. 
Wilson," par Cesar Chabrun. 
f'Principes metaphysiques du Droit," trad. Tissot, p. 238. 



224* President Wilson 

ing to civil methods, that is to say, like a law 
suit, and not in the barbarous and savage man- 
ner of war." 

President Wilson is here the representative 
of a practice earlier than the theories. Kant 
deviated from those constitutional principles 
with which he was dealing. He appeared to 
foresee an international form of government, 
in which the various states, raised to a higher 
moral dignity, would themselves insist upon 
the respect due to law. President Wilson ig- 
nored these dreams. ''In his system humanity 
becomes an organisation with a function to 
fulfil, an aim to reach," writes M. A. Fe'ier 
very ably. ''To attain that end humanity has 
need of a certain proper order, and the ele- 
ments of this order must be determined ac- 
cording to rule. To ensure the execution of 
these rules the organism must establish rati- 
fications and assents, to be put into movement 
by a special power. It is clear then that the 
contracting system must be replaced by a statu- 
tory system; that the autonomous system, 
solely based upon a categorical command, gives 
place in Wilson's idea to a heteronomous sys- 
tem which can at need call force to its aid. . . . 
Still more absurd is the likeness to Rousseau. 
, . . In contradiction to Rousseau, Mr. Wilson 



Towards War: Doctrines 225 

admits a constraint in the name of the law, 
which hmits the liberty of each member and 
suppresses the possibility of abuse of the rights 
of one to the detriment of the other members. 
The Wilsonian system is authority itself, and 
there is no fear in saying so. In our stage of 
social evolution and with our present interna- 
tional manners force must be used in the serv- 
ice of right. Pascal wrote that justice and 
force must be linked together, so that what is 
just must be also very strong." * 

The President adopted the League's ideas 
with that rapidity and energy which make him 
so admirable a politician. He saw that these 
ideas would be very useful to him; useful for 
his world policy, useful also for his home pol- 
icy and for the conduct of his Party in which 
pacifists were so numerous. He also recog- 
nised that the proclamation of an ideal would 
give him a greater moral and semi-religious 
power. ''The force of the majority is the inno- 
vation of modern society,'' he wrote in 1889. 
"To-day the art of the statesmen is to awaken, 
to arouse, and to direct this new force." To 
this art he applied himself, and stood revealed 
a master. He exerted himself with a calcu- 
lated lucidity, but also with a poet's ardour. 

*"Le Systeme de M. Wilson," by A. Feier, L'Avenir, 
August- September, 1917. 



226 President Wilson 

He not only inspired and led forward his peo- 
ple. He inspired himself with his people. His 
sentiments were at once simple and profound, 
and, in expressing them, he hoped to reach 
that national unity which was the limit of his 
efforts. 

So, in answer to the League's invitation, he 
promised to deliver an important speech. His 
intention was announced some time in advance 
that public attention might be awakened and 
his words expected with attention. This 
speech deserved study. The whole tone was 
neutral and pacifist, as he intended. 

'With the causes and the objects of the 
Great War we are not concerned," he said. 
"The obscure foundations from which its stu- 
pendous flood has burst forth we are not in- 
terested to search for or explore.'' The effect 
of the war was to threaten certain of the rights 
of the United States, and the United States 
had therefore a word to say in the matter. 
'We are not mere disconnected lookers-on/' 
The President said this for the first time, and 
the meaning of these plain words, very plainly 
pronounced, was understood. He continued: 
"We are participants, whether we would or 
not, in the Hfe of the world. The interests of 
all nations are our own also. We are partners 
with the rest, and what affects mankind is in- 



Towards War: Doctrines 227 

evitably our affair as well as the affair of the 
nations of Europe and of Asia. . . ." These 
were big words for an American statesman, 
for, in one stroke, they broke down the sepa- 
ration of the New World from the Old. ''We 
are a separate people with a separate soul," 
hymned the American people in 1914. In 1916 
their President declared that they were a peo- 
ple amongst peoples, members of a common 
humanity. He developed his ideas. If we are 
participants wx have the right to intervene. 
Then he added a threat which appears to refer 
to Germany. 

'Tt is probable that if it had been foreseen 
just w^hat would happen, just what alliances 
would be formed, just what forces arrayed 
against one another, those who brought the 
great contest on would have been glad to sub- 
stitute conference for force. If we ourselves 
had been afforded some opportunity to apprise 
the belligerents of the attitude which it would 
be our duty to take, of the policies and prac- 
tices against which we would feel bound to use 
all our moral and economic strength, and in 
certain circumstances even our physical 
strength, also our own contribution to the 
counsel which might have averted the struggle, 
would have been considered worth weighing 
and regarding." 



228 President Wilson 

President Wilson did not doubt, and has 
never doubted, that ''those who brought the 
great contest on" are the statesmen of Ger- 
many. 

He concluded then that the United States 
should join with other nations in arranging an 
agreed peace. ''This is undoubtedly the 
thought of America, and what we are going 
to say at the right moment.'' He defined the 
wish of the people of the United States. 
Firstly, the belligerents should mutually ar- 
range to make peace; secondly, an association 
of nations should be founded to maintain the 
freedom of the seas and to prevent any war 
undertaken in opposition to treaty rights with- 
out previous warning and the submission of 
the litigious claims to the judgment of the 
world — a mutual guarantee of territorial in- 
tegrity and of political independence. These 
words are italicized, as they appear to define 
juridically the understanding the United 
States will be ready to conclude on the morrow 
of the war. 

The speech of May 27th was considerably 
discussed. The partisans of the Entente re- 
proached the President for his impenitent 
neutrality; the conservative Republicans re- 
proached him for his lack of reality, his un- 
mindful ignorance of diplomatic problems. 



Towards War: Doctrines 229 

''A universal association of nations . . /' 
ironically wrote Mr. Morton Fullerton. "Such, 
then, is the unstatesmanlike dream of the re- 
sponsible head of one of the foremost States 
of the world, almost two years after the out- 
break of a war which is being waged in con- 
ditions that stultify every possible pretext for 
harbouring such a dangerous Utopia." * 

Would Mr. Morton Fullerton have written 
those words to-day? The responsible chief of 
a great democracy speaks always to crowds 
which are sensible to dreams alone. To attract 
them he must expound dreams. But he can- 
not be blamed if at the same time he pursues 
his own plans. The speech delivered on May 
27th is a link in a tight chain. The President's 
design was to familiarise the people of the 
United States with the idea of intervention in 
the European conflict, and he had known well 
how to do it. The American friends of Ger- 
many and the enemies of Great Britain under- 
stood and signalled the danger. The Sun, for 
May 29th, protested: 

"Do not let us be dragged into foreign alli- 
ances. The President proposes nothing less 
than the reversal of our traditional policy, set- 

*"The American Crisis and the War," by William Morton 
Fullerton, 1916. 



230 President Wilson 

ting aside the position which up to the present 
we have followed so closely." 

The Sun was right in its statement of the 
President's attitude, and saw without doubt 
that although the President spoke insistently 
of peace it was to lead the people of which he 
was the head more easily towards war. 



X — Re-election 



FROM this moment the electoral period 
really commenced. Event rapidly 
followed event both within and with- 
out the United States. For the 
American people, however, the one factor dom- 
inating all others was the expiration of the 
presidential term of office. Whatever else 
might be happening this alone pre-occupied 
their minds. 

Would Woodrow Wilson be re-elected? 
There was no question as to his candidature, 
which he had announced in February, 191 3. 
In a letter dated February 13, 1913, addressed 
to Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer he had stated: 
''Four years is too long a term for a President 
who is not the true spokesman of the people, 
who is imposed upon and does not lead. It is 
too short a term for a President who is doing 
or attempting a great work of reform and who 
has not had time to finish it." As adversary 
he had the republican party, still in possession 
of its old and powerful prestige, supported by 
the great financiers, ardent friends of the En- 
tente who bore the President no goodwill for 

231 



232 President Wilson 

his neutrality, and backed also by the friends 
of Germany who refused to forgive him for 
not having forbidden the sale of arms and mu- 
nitions to the Entente. With him was the mass 
of the democratic party. It had long been de- 
prived of the advantages of being in power. 
But, despite petty revolts, it still followed with 
discipline a leader which honoured and served 
it. Mr. Wilson was also helped by a tradition 
which advises the American people to retain a 
president in office if he merits the privilege. 
To his credit stood immense w^ork, reforms 
achieved and in progress, and an unceasing 
activity which was never absent when called 
for. 

He pressed forward the military training 
measure. The old regular army consisted of 
100,000 men. He wished to increase it to 
170,000, with a reserve of 230,000, making 
400,000 in all. Behind the first army he 
planned a second for territorial defence, which 
would also consist of 400,000 men. Enlist- 
ment was to be upon the voluntary principle. 
But ''if the number of volunteers did not suf- 
fice to complete the effectives of the battalions, 
the necessary men would be raised in the mi- 
litia organisations." The militia included all 
men between the ages of 18 and 45, and was in 
fact conscription. President Wilson did not 



Re-election 233 



refer to it in his speech, but he wanted and 
obtained it according to the principles he laid 
down. On other points, which he considered 
of lesser importance, he gave way. The War 
Office wanted the national army to be wholly 
subordinate to the federal state; the Demo- 
crats wished the State Militia kept up under a 
partial control of the federal military authori- 
ties. The President refused to intervene, al- 
lowed action to be taken, and his party sub- 
mitted. 

Events soon proved that the concession was 
not a happy one. Within four months the in- 
volved Mexican business became more acute, 
and the Government of the United States was 
compelled to seek the aid of arms. Already 
5,000 men of the regular army had entered 
Mexico, under the command of General Persh- 
ing, to pursue the irregular bands. A long 
frontier had to be guarded and President Wil- 
son called out the militia. This immediate test 
showed sad results. Sixty-three per cent of 
the men called up had no military training, and 
many lacked equipment three months after 
their mobilisation. The press did not spare 
criticism of the President on this occasion. 
He remained silent. It may be believed that 
he was not altogether upset by the clear reve- 
lation of his party's blunder. 



234 President Wilson 

He had other legislation in hand, notably a 
measure destined to make the navy second in 
the world. President Wilson still admitted the 
maritime supremacy of Great Britain. An- 
other law concerned the mercantile marine. 
Until then America had been dominated by the 
old shipping industries of Europe. The Presi- 
dent wished to see his country free and owning 
its own fleet for world commerce as well as for 
war. He wanted an early creation of what 
seemed to be a State fleet. Congress did not 
agree with him, and he gave way. It was set- 
tled that the State should not own its own ships 
more than five years after the conclusion of 
peace in Europe. However, he had been al- 
lowed, on essential consideration, a capital sum 
of 50,000,000 dollars for purchase and con- 
struction. The future was soon to show the 
urgency of this credit and its great national 
utility. 

This did not complete his plans. President 
Wilson had not forgotten the domestic legis- 
lation he had already initiated. Two measures 
remained in suspense, one dealing with agri- 
cultural credit, the other with child labour in 
factories. The approaching end of the parlia- 
mentary session threatened both. Wishing to 
save them, the President directly appealed to 
the party leaders. The measure dealing with 



Re-election 235 



child labour presented great judicial difficul- 
ties. Promulgated by the central power it ap- 
plied to the internal affairs of the autonomous 
states contrary to tradition and the constitu- 
tion. The President had recognised this sev- 
eral years earlier. "If the federal legislation 
controlling child labour in factories is passed 
as proposed," he wrote, ''it will furnish a strik- 
ing example of the extension of the central 
power, quasi-unlimited and exceeding the writ- 
ten text of the constitution." But President 
\Mlson had a passion for centralised author- 
ity, and no religious belief in the written word. 
He obtained his measure after a sharp conflict 
with the industrial magnates.* 

There remained some domestic legislation, 

*This law offers an example of the curious procedure 
employed by the Federal American State to extend its powers. 
It does not possess the power to impose legislation upon 
any particular State with regard to labour. So it acts as 
follows. It evokes its rights to regulate commercial exchange 
between the States. It forbids the circulation of products 
which have not been manufactured according to the stand- 
ards established by law. This juggling serves its purpose. 
All industries must conform, unless they renounce the bene- 
fits of federal and world markets, and must not employ a 
child under the age of fourteen. Children under seventeen 
cannot be employed on night work, or for more than eight 
hours. An analogous proceeding permits the Government 
of the United States to establish a censorship after having 
declared war. The press is allowed every liberty of criticism. 
But should this become trying postal service is refused. 
Criticism is not forbidden, but it is smothered. 



236 President Wilson 

suddenly improvised, and of a very discussable 
nature, which brought the four years of his 
first presidency to a close. In August, 1916, 
400,000 railway workers — mechanics, guards, 
higher-grade engine drivers — imperatively de- 
manded a reduction of their working hours 
from nine or ten to eight. The railway cor- 
porations refused the demand, and proposed 
arbitration. This, in their turn, the men re- 
fused, and announced their intention of strik- 
ing on September 24th. From Philadelphia to 
San Francisco, from the great lakes of the 
north to New Orleans, all transport would 
cease. The threat was a serious one, and the 
men had chosen very cleverly the moment to 
issue it so roughly. But nine weeks had to 
elapse before the date of the presidential elec- 
tion, and the conservative Republicans would 
have good cause of quarrel with Mr. Wilson 
if a great domestic crisis was the final act of 
his administration. The men's leaders called 
upon him to deal legislatively with the matter. 
He moved with his usual energy, although it 
was not an energy displaying much spirit. On 
August 29th, he visited Congress in person as 
he had done four months earlier to read his 
ultimatum to Germany. This time he came 
to cede to an ultimatum. He asked for the 
immediate voting of a measure which, in its 



Re-election 237 



essentials, would give the railwaymen a legal 
day of eight hours. The concession was pain- 
ful, and the long presidential speech setting it 
forth was found unattractive. President Wil- 
son might have spoken more severely of the 
unions which refused arbitration and held their 
country by the throat. Amongst the moral 
ideas expressed in his message such a judg- 
ment would have found a fitting place. But 
his words were carefully guarded. He blamed 
the companies rather than the syndicates. He 
might have recalled the fact that he was not 
unequipped should the country need protection 
against the blackmail of a corporation. He 
allowed the opportunity to pass, and his urgent 
need of the favour of the masses — and their 
vote — appeared a trifle too clearly. On August 
31st the measure was voted with few modi- 
fications. The strike did not take place. This 
was the last and the least glorious of his vic- 
tories. 

Six years earlier this man had been a uni- 
versity professor of distinction. Since then his 
work had been enormous. The people of the 
United States were conscious of the control of 
a leader, and such control is to their taste. 
They do not resist personal power, but rather 
greet it with acclamation. Some of their ''in- 



238 President Wilson 

tellectuals" endeavour to fight against this na- 
tional impulse, but without effect. Mr. George 
E. Boren denounced in the Sun the ''Darwin- 
ian policy/' introduced into the United States 
both in doctrine and in deed by the Professor- 
President Wilson. ''Constitutions are what 
politicians make them," he wrote. "As Presi- 
dent, what did he do with the Government of 
the United States? He humiHated it. He 
made it submit to the threat of a strike. He 
seriously attacked the freedom of the States. 
He threatened the freedom of industry in mak- 
ing the central power the purchaser and the 
exploiter of a fleet. The Constitution, thus 
understood, signifies no more than w^hat can 
be demanded by public opinion — at any mo- 
ment a prey to heresy or hysterics." Mr. 
George E. Boren spoke unjustly. The Consti- 
tution, as understood by President Wilson, 
does not obey the caprice of public opinion. It 
essentially obeys a leader who knows public 
opinion, who interprets it with freedom and 
gives it his direction. Such is his doctrine and 
such his practice. He has to submit, to yield, 
to bend low in his concessions. He has to act 
the part of a demagogue, a necessity under a 
democratic regime. But he is a dictator and 
not a demagogue. 

Listen to his dictatorial voice. On Septem- 



Re-election 239 



ber 2, 1916, he delivered his first speech of 
the electoral campaign. He recalled his eco- 
nomic and social work, the revision of tariffs, 
the creation of a merchant marine, of a federal 
bank, of a national service for labour registra- 
tion, of federal regulation for the protection 
of child labour. He enumerated with simplic- 
ity a succession of victories. The enumeration 
alone sufficed his pride. He then turned to 
foreign problems. With feeble Mexico he had 
been patient. He congratulated himself upon 
a policy he intended to continue. He had pro- 
tested strongly against methods of w^ar on 
the seas which had destroyed so many Ameri- 
can lives. He congratulated himself on this 
policy also, which w^ould be continued. He 
would fight to his last breath against those 
American citizens who, traitors to America, 
remained loyal to their former nationality. 
Then for the future. President Wilson dis- 
cussed the new^ problems, immense and limitless 
prospectives opened up by the Great War. He 
did not utter a word which enabled any one to 
guess the future action of the United States 
in that war. His policy forbad him. But he 
asserted with force that the United States 
w^ould participate in the peace. What did he 
mean? To participate in peace one must first 
participate in w ar. These were his words : 



240 President Wilson 

"There must be a just and settled peace, and 
we here in America must contribute the full 
force of our enthusiasm and of our authority 
as a nation to the organisation of that peace 
upon world-wide foundations that cannot 
easily be shaken. No nation should be forced 
to take sides in any quarrel in which its own 
honour and integrity and the fortunes of its 
own people are not involved ; but no nation can 
any longer remain neutral as against any wil- 
ful disturbance of the peace of the world. The 
effects of war can no longer be confined to the 
areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart 
in interest when the life and interests of all 
nations are thrown into confusion and peril. 
If hopeful and generous enterprise is to be 
renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life 
are indeed to be revived when peace comes 
again, a new atmosphere of justice and friend- 
ship must be generated by means the world 
has never tried before. The nations of the 
world must unite in joint guarantees that what- 
ever is done to disturb the whole world's life 
must first be tested in the court of the whole 
world's opinion before it is attempted. 

*'These are the new foundations the world 
must build for itself, and we must play our 
part in the reconstruction, generously and 
without too much thought of our separate in- 



Re-election 241 



terests. We must make ourselves ready to 
play it intelligently, vigorously, and well. . . . 
We can no longer indulge our traditional pro- 
vincialism. We are to play a leading part in 
the world drama whether we wish it or not. 
We shall lend, not borrow; act for ourselves, 
not imitate or follow; organise and initiate, 
not peep about, merely to see where we may 
get in. 

''This world peace must bring its reward. 
The fruits of the earth must be raised and ex- 
changed. The United States will do its share, 
a great share, in this work of human renais- 
sance. Nations will have urgent needs which 
must be satisfied. American exporters will be 
given assistance. If any portion of the laws 
directed against trusts hinder the combination 
of these traders the laws will be revised. Their 
foreign enterprises will not be hindered. 

*'The field will be free, the instrumentalities 
at hand. . . . The Government of the United 
States will insist upon the maintenance 
throughout the world of conditions of fairness 
and of evenhanded justice in the commercial 
dealings of the nations." The President fin- 
ished his speech with a moving peroration : 

'The day of Little Americanism with its 
narrow horizons ... its methods of 'protec- 
tion/ is past and gone. ... A day of enter- 



242 President Wilson 

prise has at last dawned for the United States, 
whose field is the wide world. . . . We hope to 
see the stimulus of that new day draw all 
America, the republics of both continents, on to 
a new life and energy and initiative in the 
great affairs of peace. We are Americans for 
Big America, and rejoice to look forward to 
the days in which America shall strive to stir 
the world without irritating it or drawing it 
on to new antagonisms. . . . Upon this rec- 
ord and in the faith of this purpose we go to 
the country.'' 

Election day drew near. Who w^ould be suc- 
cessful? W^ould Wilson gain the day? Noth- 
ing was certain. Wilson's personal position 
was strong, but his electoral difficulties were 
numerous. In 19 12 he succeeded, owing to the 
division of his opponents' party. Had the 
votes obtained by the Progressist Roosevelt 
and the Republican Taft been massed against 
him he would have been in a minority of 
1,300,000. But now the Progressives and Re- 
publicans had united. Hughes, a former Gov- 
ernor of the State of New York, one of the 
nine judges of the Supreme Court, a capable 
man but without magnetism, was their candi- 
date. Wilson had first to turn over 1,300,000 
votes. It was a large number, and even the 



Re-election 243 



most confident had their doubts. The war no 
longer pre-occupied the electorate which was 
solely interested in the speeches and personali- 
ties of Wilson and Hughes. Every one was 
excited by the race between the two men. 

A glance must be taken of the President at 
home. Miss Ida M. Tarbell, a journalist of 
much ability, has given us the opportunity. 
We see him in his country house at Shadow 
Lawn. He meets his visitor with a hearty 
welcome ; he is amiable because he has decided 
to be amiable. ''A President certainly, always 
the President, but also a gentleman who, hav- 
ing invited you to his table, treats you as a 
friend, interests himself in the things you are 
interested in, and has the frank goodwill not 
to speak to you but to gossip with you." He 
touches upon political questions if the visitor 
asks him, but his comment is one of detach- 
ment. He is President, he governs according 
to his conscience, li he is re-elected he will 
do his best. If he is not re-elected he will re- 
turn to his university life. He "Stands ready 
to serve, and he awaits the call, 'vliss Tarbell 
asks him what he reads. 

"For fourteen years I have not read a seri- 
ous book," he answers. "Detective stories are 
the only ones which hold me. There are too 



244 President Wilson 

many problems in modern novels. I have 
enough problems. Sometimes I read a little 
verse, and re-open one of my favourite poets. 
There are passages in Tennyson which have 
been of great help to me. I do not know of 
any one who has expounded better than Tenny- 
son the theory of popular government. Do 
you remember these lines? 

A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled. 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith. 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made. 
Some pati-ent force to change them when we will, 
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd. 

''Firm against the crowdT repeated the 
President. ''Firm against the crowd, that is 
the difficulty, the danger " 

He recalled to his intca viewer the resistance 
he had been obliged to put up against certain 
fanatical excitements. But the recollections 
were neither bitter nor sad. The President 
had no doubt of the solidarity of agreement 
which united him to his people. 

"I do not think there is a man living more 
soaked in American thought than I am. I 
have lived with it all my life. When I try to 
disentangle the ideas of the people and en- 
deavour to express them if at first there is dis- 
accord I am not astonished. I have firm con- 
fidence that their ideas will rally to mine. I 



Re-election 245 



much prefer a decision based upon reflection 
to one founded in haste." 

We will follow the subject of our study to 
one of those meetings where thousands of audi- 
tors listened with astonishing silence and self- 
control to the presidential candidates. On Oc- 
tober 26, 1916, Wilson spoke at Cincinnati. 
He attacked the banking interests, whose mo- 
nopoly had been overthrow^n by the Federal 
Bank he had instituted. 

"Have we freed ourselves," he demanded, 
"in order that newcomers should impertinently 
become our masters? I will not undertake to 
direct your affairs, and you know " 



"You do it very well," cried the crowd with 
cheers. 

"No, dear citizens," he answered, "I am 
only trying to understand what you wish me 
to do, and that I do." 

How suddenly this professor has left the 
heights ! A moment ago he was reciting Ten- 
nyson to us. W^e were shadowed by an Ox- 
ford. Now we have been abruptly transported 
to a Cincinnati, an Ohio. 

Another day he spoke at Omaha in Ne- 
braska. The vanished Indians have left be- 
hind nothing but the sounds of their musical 
language. Nebraska is one of the central 



24*6 President Wilson 

states, the Atlantic and the Pacific being at 
equal distance. It is almost wholly an agri- 
cultural state, the population being indifferent 
to everything outside the borders of its own 
territory. President Wilson was welcomed at 
Omaha. He had maintained peace. That was 
all they knew, but it was enough to make them 
love and cherish him. He received a great re- 
ception, w^hich had all the signs of a pacifist 
manifestation. 

"He has kept us out of war !" cried somebody 
in the crowd. 

It was an agreeable cry, which others re- 
peated. 

'Who has saved the country?" shouted an- 
other. 

'Wilson !" replied the crowd with one voice. 

"Hurrah for the peacemaker." 

President Wilson knew that it was to his ad- 
vantage that the mob should credit him with 
the preservation of peace. But he knew that 
it would be hardly possible to maintain peace 
longer. His position was delicate. To exploit 
this credit would be a powerful but dishonest 
method towards immediate success. He be- 
haved, on the contrary, like an honest man, 
considering that in such a case honesty was the 
best line his policy could pursue. He warned 
the over-happy crowds on every occasion. He 



Re-election 247 



had indeed maintained peace. He accepted 
their thanks, for he maintained it with much 
trouble. But this trouble was in itself a sign 
of peril, and the people of the United States 
must hold themselves ready against the con- 
tinuous menace of war, a menace which stead- 
ily became more threatening. More than once 
he spoke to this effect. 

The reception at Omaha disquieted him, 
and he replied to the pacifist manifestation wath 
the most ardent and the most energetic speech 
he had delivered. It was a speech of warning. 
At first he recalled to the people of Nebraska 
the rude history of their early origins, the land 
conquered from the Indians, occupied and 
cleared by armed cultivators. Then, with a 
swift transition, he introduced the subject of 
the war. 

''There is as much combativeness in Amer- 
ica as in any other nation of the world. 

*'\Ve have a programme for our domestic 
life in America, and we will not forget it. But 
we have never formulated with the desired 
clearness our programme for things outside 
America, for the part she must play in the 
world. We must imperatively see to this with- 
out delay. 

''We have never forgotten, as you know, 
and we have always treated his words wath 



248 President Wilson 

respect, the advice of our great Washington. 
He told us to keep free of compromising for- 
eign affairs. He meant by that, if I under- 
stand him well, that we must not become en- 
tangled in the ambitions and secret schemes 
of other nations. But he did not wish to say 
— and here I must be permitted to risk an in- 
terpretation of the words of this great man — 
that we ought to evade the mutual agreements 
of the world. For we are part of the world, 
and cannot be indifferent towards anything 
that takes place in it. 

*'The whole world knows this. We are 
ready to draw upon our forces without reserve 
to preserve peace in the interests of humanity. 
What troubles the whole world concerns the 
whole world. Our duty is to place all our 
strength at the service of a League of Nations 
instituted to repress any one endeavouring to 
disturb peace. 

''If any one asks you, 'Are you ready to 
fight?' answer, 'Yes, I am ready to fight for a 
cause worth fighting for.* You are not going 
to fight over any paltry trouble. You are only 
interested in a single quarrel — that which con- 
cerns the Rights of Man. Human blood must 
be spilt, if necessary, but it must be spilt for 
a noble cause. The title deeds of liberty are 
sealed with the blood of free men.'' 



Re-election 249 



The President spoke with warmth, and the 
people of Nebraska cheered him, according to 
the N'ew York Tribune, at each sentence. Did 
these distant inhabitants understand him? It 
is not certain. But could the President, with- 
out creating panic, have said more? He was 
not able. 

He warned the pacifists. More categorically 
he cautioned the German-Americans. The 
president of a league which favoured their 
ideas sent him a telegram. 

"Again we greet you with popular disap- 
proval of your pro-British policies. Your fail- 
ure to secure compliance with all American 
rights, your leniency towards the British Em- 
pire, your approval of war loans and ammuni- 
tion traffic, are the issues of this campaign." 

The answer was immediate. And with it 
was published the provocatory telegram. 

"Your telegram received. Would feel deeply morti- 
fied to have you, or anybody like you, voting for me. 
Since you have access to many disloyal Americans, and 
I have not, I will ask you to convey this message to 
them. 

WooDRow Wilson. 

On the morning of November 7th the result 
was in doubt. That was not surprising in so 
disputable and difficult an election. What was 
surprising, what in fact was laughable (if the 



250 President Wilson 

phrase be permitted concerning so serious a 
matter), were the shabby tricks and the un- 
seasonableness of the difficulties. In Novem- 
ber, 1916, there was but one question for the 
United States to decide. That question was 
the Great War. Would they be actors or spec- 
tators? This was the thought in the chancel- 
lories of Europe and at the White House. But 
for the people of the United States the prob- 
lem was too complex. The information at 
hand was too immense and yet too vague. The 
people, not knowing, said nothing. The two 
candidates did not ask for a mandate, and no- 
body attempted to dictate one. The only ques- 
tion which mattered was not asked. Nothing 
else was substituted. In America as in Eu- 
rope the catastrophe had suspended activity. 
Thus the double campaigns of Wilson and 
Hughes were characterised by an entire ab- 
sence of programmes. Both men exhibited 
themselves to the electors and spoke. But they 
proposed no reform and no decision. They 
were empty handed. And in such a vacuum 
how could the chances be measured, or the re- 
sult foretold? How were the German-Ameri- 
cans going to cast their votes ? Vain question. 
The German-Americans, equally affronted by 
both candidates, would vote according to 
chance local intrigue. The feminine vote 



Re-election 251 



would participate for the first time in a presi- 
dential election to the tune of three or four 
millions. To whom would the women give 
preference? Vain question. The votes of the 
women will follow those of the men in this dull 
contest. The result alone could give the 
answer. 

It had to be waited for. The scrutiny was 
as slow to unravel as it was difficult to antici- 
pate. The first returns were deceptive. The 
two great eastern states, Pennsylvania and 
New York, voted as a whole against Wilson. 
They elected 82 delegates. Illinois followed 
them with 29. Wilson was thus handicapped 
from the start by 1 1 1 votes. The Republican 
press in New York lit the beacon fires of vic- 
tory and announced in giant headlines : 

Hughes elected with 290 votes. 
Possibly 312. 7 doubtful States. 

The news reached Europe, and for twenty- 
four hours Wilson was believed to have been 
defeated. He was then able to count his real 
friends, and the list was not a long one. But, 
during the afternoon of November 8th, there 
was a new atmosphere of doubt. Feeble but 
numerous majorities in the Western and 
Southern States reversed the prognostics. By 
the evening of the loth Wilson had received 



252 President Wilson 

251 votes, Hughes 242. The total number of 
votes being 531, at least 266 were necessary 
for election. Wilson still had a chance. By 
the evening of the nth he held it, although al- 
ways doubtfully. The results from California 
and Minnesota remained to be collected, but 
as the returns were disputed the counting could 
not be completed. California had 900,000 
electors. A democratic majority of 3,700 was 
worth 13 delegates to Wilson. Minnesota had 
360,000 electors. A majority of 500 votes 
would give Wilson 12 delegates. 

The election finished. Wilson received 2y6 
electoral votes; Hughes 255. Counted in pop- 
ular votes, the figures were as follows : 

Wilson (Democratic) 9,116,296 

Hughes (Republican) 8,547,474 

Benson (Socialist) 750,000 

Various 235,206 

President Wilson had thus obtained 2,800,- 
000 votes more than at his first election. This 
gain was not entirely owing to a turn-over of 
votes. New electors were numerous, the vot- 
ing body having been increased by three and 
one-half millions in four years. 

The figures were much discussed in order to 
arrive at the significance of the votes. There 
was nothing to find. Infinitely small causes ap- 



Re-election 253 



peared to have determined a majority in one 
place and another. 

If any feeling- had influenced the issue it was 
without doubt the moderation and prudence 
of the masses. They knew Wilson. He had 
governed without calamity in a period of ca- 
lamity. He had tolerably well kept his word. 
They would keep him. ''Let us keep this 
proven manr had been one of the most con- 
vincing cries of the election. 

The "chosen man" had now before him four 
years of supreme maglstrature — and the last 
four. Thus liberated from electoral preoccu- 
pations he was free to devote himself exclu- 
sively to the good of his country, and, as the 
old writers used to say, to its proper glory. 
How strangely history forms itself. This ab- 
solute rule which limits the presidential power 
to two terms of ofi^ice had its origin in the vol- 
untary resignation of Jefferson. The old 
democrat wished to prevent by the example he 
gave any ulterior return to personal power. 
Assuredly he did not foresee that such limita- 
tion would one day have for its effect the in- 
crease of presidential power, would render it 
for a short but sufficient period even dicta- 
torial. 



XI— JFar 



WE now reach the end. The events 
we are relating extend to the 
present day. They belong more 
to the present than to the past, 
and the time has not yet come when it will be 
possible to deal with them as a whole. 

What will the new President do? Will he 
intervene? A strong trend of opinion desired 
it, and wished him to propose mediation. The 
President had his own serious reasons for Hs- 
tening to this popular demand. He could not 
ignore that the Germans were constructing new 
submarines, and preparing for a resumption of 
their submarine war. The third spring would 
bring a fresh crisis. This would be the third, 
and the President believed it would be decisive, 
making war inevitable. But he did not wish 
war to surprise him. It was coming, and he 
saw it coming. So he prepared to meet the 
cataclysm adroitly. His first step was an ap- 
peal for peace, a demand to the belligerents to 
reveal their intentions and aims. The Presi- 
dent considered the terms of this appeal, and, 
despite his usual habit of secrecy, the news 

254 



War 255 

spread. On November 23rd his project was 
known at Berne, Vienna, and Berlin. Active 
discussion ensued. Washington issued an of- 
ficial denial which scarcely calmed the rumour. 
On November 26th Ambassador Gerard was at 
Washington. He saw the President, dined 
with Ambassador Bernstorff and immediately 
returned to Berlin. There, speaking at a ban- 
quet, he allowed it to be understood in guarded 
words that a resumption of submarine warfare 
would interrupt the good relations existing be- 
tween Germany and the United States. De- 
cember had been reached. The President was 
continuously at work. Undoubtedly his plan 
was to publish a pacific appeal at the moment 
of the Christmas festival. But another ru- 
mour — springing from Vienna or Berlin — had 
been placed in circulation. A mysterious event 
was to take place. The Reichstag was sum- 
moned for December 12th, and a speech from 
the Chancellor was promised. On the day an- 
nounced he spoke, and launched an appeal for 
peace. 

Was it by chance ? Hardly. This idea had 
been ripening for a long while in America, and 
Bethmann-Hollweg seized hold of it at the 
very moment another statesman was about to 
make it his own. The tactics were clever. The 
German Chancellory did not wish another to 



256 President Wilson 

have the benefit of so fine an attitude. Well 
acquainted with the deeds in preparation for 
the following April it made a wily move to 
excuse the brutalities which would ensue. The 
appeal was addressed to neutral states. ''We 
are persuaded that the propositions we offer, 
which aim at the certainty of the future exist- 
ence, honour, and development of our nation, 
may well serve as the foundation of a durable 
peace. If, in spite of this offer of peace and 
conciliation, the fight must continue, the four 
Allied Powers are determined to pursue it to a 
victorious conclusion, solemnly, before human- 
ity and before history, declining all responsi- 
bility.'' 

President Wilson had been decidedly 
thwarted. Once again Prussia had been the 
first to mobilise, and, by her quickness of move- 
ment, had disconcerted her adversary. What 
was he to do? Could he renounce the whole 
project because he had lost the first move ? He 
persisted with his plan, and on December i8th 
published the appeal he had had in preparation. 

This appeal was extremely prudent. Presi- 
dent Wilson declined "to propose peace, even 
to offer mediation." He suggested only ''that 
some soundings might be taken, so that it could 
be discovered how far we are from that haven 
of peace towards which all humanity yearns 



War 257 

with an intense and gathering force." He in- 
dicated certain points upon which the belliger- 
ents appeared to be in agreement, and also the 
necessity of a liberal, durable, and guaranteed 
peace. He also announced, and these words 
were the most significant in his appeal, that if 
the war continued "the situation of neutral 
nations, already very difficult, would become 
wholly impossible.'' 

At first sight the coincidence of the two 
notes was astonishing. Germany had ap- 
pealed to the neutrals. The most powerful of 
the neutral states appeared to have replied to 
her appeal. Some people even thought that 
President Wilson, in agreement with Germany, 
was busying himself to impose the peace she 
was asking for. There was certainly some ap- 
pearance of it. 

The Entente answered wdth courtesy, and 
in detail. The Central Empires replied in ten 
lines with transparent disdain. Was this the 
end? Could there be no other result to docu- 
ments which had provoked such mixed feelings 
of anger, hope, and expectation? The Presi- 
dent pursued his way. On January 21, 19 17, 
he appeared in the Senate and read a long mes- 
sage which astonished profoundly both chan- 
cellories and nations. Setting aside the con- 
tingencies of war and peace, the President out- 



258 President Wilson 

lined the existence of a Society of Nations, 
which, he asserted, the people of the United 
States had as a mission to establish. It was 
not the first time he had dealt with the subject, 
which he had referred to in a speech upon a 
League to enforce Peace made before Con- 
gress on May 2y, 191 6. He now developed 
these principles, and the text of his message 
must be given in full. 

PRESIDENT Wilson's message to the 

AMERICAN CONGRESS 
COMMUNICATED TO THE BELLIGERENT STATES 

(Known as the Note of January 22 , 1^17) 

Gentlemen of the Senate, 

On the 1 8th of December last I addressed 
an identic Note to the Governments of the na- 
tions now at war requesting them to state, 
more definitely than they had yet been by either 
group of belligerents, the terms upon which 
they would deem it possible to make peace. 

I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the 
rights of all neutral nations like our own, many 
of whose most vital interests the war puts in 
constant jeopardy. 

The Central Powers united in a reply which 
stated merely that they were ready to meet 



War 259 

their antagonists in conference to discuss 
terms of peace. 

The Entente Powers have replied much more 
definitely, and have stated, in general terms 
indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply 
details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts 
of reparation which they deem to be the indis- 
pensable conditions of a satisfactory settle- 
ment. 

We are much nearer a definite discussion of 
the peace which shall end the present war. 
We are that much nearer the discussion of the 
international concert which must thereafter 
hold the world at peace. In every discussion 
of the peace that must end this war it is taken 
for granted that peace must be followed by a 
definite concert of the Powers which will make 
it virtually impossible that any such catastro- 
phe should ever overwhelm us again. Every 
lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful 
man, must take that for granted. 

I have sought this opportunity to address 
you because I thought that I owed it to you, 
as the council associated with me in the final 
determination of our international obligations, 
to disclose to you without reserve the thought 
and purpose that have been taking form in my 
mind with regard to the duty of our Govern- 
ment in the days to come, when it will be nee- 



260 President Wilson 

essary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the 
foundations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the 
United States should play no part in that great 
enterprise. To take part in such a service will 
be the opportunity for which they have sought 
to prepare themselves by the very principles 
and purposes of their polity and the approved 
practices of their Government ever since the 
days when they set up a new nation in the high 
and honourable hope that it might in all that 
it was and did show mankind the way to lib- 
erty. They cannot in honour withhold the 
service to which they are now about to be chal- 
lenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But 
they owe it to themselves and to the other na- 
tions of the world to state the conditions under 
which they will feel free to render it. 

That service is nothing less than this: To 
add their authority and their power to the au- 
thority and force of other nations to guaran- 
tee peace and justice throughout the world. 
Such a settlement cannot now be long post- 
poned. It is right that before it comes this 
Government should frankly formulate the con- 
ditions upon which it would feel justified in 
asking our people to approve its formal and 
solemn adherence to a league for peace. I am 
here to attempt to state those conditions. 



War 261 

The present war must first be ended, but we 
owe it to candour and to a just regard for the 
opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our 
participation in guarantees of future peace is 
concerned, it makes a great deal of difference 
in what w^ay and upon what terms it is ended. 

The treaties and agreements which bring it 
to an end must embody terms that will create 
a peace that is worth guaranteeing and pre- 
serving, a peace that will win the approval of 
mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the 
several interests and immediate aims of the na- 
tions engaged. 

We shall have no voice in determining what 
those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, 
have a voice in determining whether they shall 
be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a 
universal covenant; and our judgment upon 
w^hat is fundamental and essential as a condi- 
tion precedent to permanency should be spoken 
now, not afterwards, when it may be too late. 

No covenant of co-operative peace that does 
not include the peoples of the New World can 
suffice to keep the future safe against war; and 
yet there is only one sort of peace that the peo- 
ples of America could join in guaranteeing. 
The elements of that peace must be elements 
that engage the confidence and satisfy the 
principles of the American Government, ele- 



262 President Wilson 

merits consistent with the political faith and 
the practical convictions which the peoples of 
America have once for all embraced and un- 
dertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American 
Government would throw any obstacle in the 
way of any terms of peace the Governments 
now at war might agree upon, or seek to upset 
them when made, whatever they might be. I 
only take it for granted that mere terms of 
peace between the belligerents will not satisfy 
even the belligerents themselves. Mere agree- 
ments may not make peace secure. 

It will be absolutely necessary that a force 
be created as a guarantor of the permanency of 
the settlement so much greater than the force 
of any nation now engaged or any alliance 
hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, 
no probable combination of nations, could face 
or withstand it. If the peace presently to be 
made is to endure, it must be a peace made 
secure by the organised major force of man- 
kind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed 
upon will determine whether it is a peace for 
which such a guarantee can be secured. The 
question upon which the whole future peace 
and policy of the world depends is this : Is the 
present a struggle for a just and secure peace 



War 263 

or only for a new balance of power? If it be 
only a struggle for a new balance of power, 
who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the 
stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? 
Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. 
There must be, not a balance of power, but a 
community of power; not organised rivalries, 
but an organised common peace. 

Fortunately, we have received very explicit 
assurances on this point. 

The statesmen of both of the groups of na- 
tions now arrayed against one another have 
said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, 
that it was no part of the purpose they had in 
mind to crush their antagonists. But the im- 
plications of these assurances may not be 
equally clear to all — may not be the same on 
both sides of the water. I think it will be serv- 
iceable if I attempt to set forth what we un- 
derstand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a 
peace without victory. 

I beg that I may be permitted to put my own 
interpretation upon it, and that it may be un- 
derstood that no other interpretation was in 
my thought. I am seeking only to face reali- 
ties, and to face them without soft conceal- 
ments. 

Victory would mean peace forced upon the 



264 President Wilson 

loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the van- 
quished. It would be accepted in humihation, 
under duress, at intolerable sacrifice, and would 
leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory 
upon which terms of peace would rest, not per- 
manently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a 
peace between equals can last — only a peace 
the very principle of which is equality and a 
common participation in a common benefit. 
The right state of mind, the right feeling be- 
tween nations, is as necessary for a lasting 
peace as is the just settlement of vexed ques- 
tions of territory or of racial and national 
allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace 
must be founded, if it is to last, must be an 
equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged 
must neither recognise nor imply a difference 
between big nations and small, between those 
that are powerful and those that are weak. 
Right must be based upon the common 
strength, not upon the individual strength, of 
the nations upon w^hose concert peace will 
depend. 

Equality of territory or of resources there, 
of course, cannot be, nor any sort of equality 
not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legiti- 
mate development of the peoples themselves. 
But no one asks or expects anything more than 



Waj' 265 

an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now 
for freedom of life, not tor equipoises of 
power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than 
even equality of right among organised na- 
tions. 

No peace can last, or ought to last, which 
does not recognise and accept the principle that 
Governments derive all their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, and that no right 
anywhere exists to hand peoples about from 
potentate to potentate as if they were prop- 
erty. 

I take it for granted, for instance, if I may 
venture upon a single example, that statesmen 
everywhere are agreed that there should be a 
united, independent, and autonomous Poland, 
and that henceforth inviolable security of life, 
of worship, and of industrial and social de- 
velopment should be guaranteed to all peoples 
who have lived hitherto under the power of 
Governments devoted to a faith and purpose 
hostile to their own. 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to 
exalt an abstract political principle which has 
always been held very dear by those who have 
sought to build up liberty in America, but for 
the same reason that I have spoken of the other 
conditions of peace which seem to me clearly 



266 Fresident Wilson 

indispensable— because I wish frankly to un- 
cover realities. 

Any peace which does not recognise and ac- 
cept this principle will inevitably be upset. It 
will not rest upon the affections or the convic- 
tions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of 
whole populations will fight subtly and con- 
stantly against it, and all the world will sym- 
pathise. The world can be at peace only if its 
life is stable, and there can be no stability 
where the will is in rebellion, where there is 
not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, 
of freedom, and of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great 
people now struggling towards a full develop- 
ment of its resources and of its powers should 
be assured a direct outlet to the great highways 
of the seas. 

Where this cannot be done by the cession of 
territory, it no doubt can be done by the neu- 
tralisation of direct rights of way under the 
general guarantee which will assure the peace 
itself. With a right comity of arrangement no 
nation need be shut away from free access to 
the open paths of the world's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law 
and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas 
is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and co- 
operation. 



War 267 

No doubt a somewhat radical reconsider- 
ation of many of the rules of international 
practice hitherto thought to be established may 
be necessary in order to make the seas indeed 
free and common in practically all circum- 
stances for the use of mankind; but the motive 
for such changes is convincing and impelling. 
There can be no trust or intimacy between the 
peoples of the world without them. The free, 
constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations 
is an essential part of the process of peace and 
of development. It need not be difficult either 
to define or to secure the freedom of the seas 
if the Governments of the world sincerely de- 
sire to come to an agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the 
limitation of naval armaments and the co-oper- 
ation of the navies of the world in keeping the 
seas at once free and safe, and the question of 
limiting naval armaments opens the wider, and 
perhaps more difficult, question of the limitation 
of armies and of all programmes of military 
preparation. Difficult and delicate as these 
questions are, they must be faced with the ut- 
most candour and decided in a spirit of real ac- 
commodation, if peace is to come with healing 
in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be 
had without concession and sacrifice. 

There can be no sense of safety and equality 



268 President Wilson 

among the nations if great and preponderating 
armaments are henceforth to continue here and 
there to be built up and maintained. The 
statesmen of the world must plan for peace 
and nations must adjust and accommodate 
their policy to it as they have planned for war 
and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. 

The question of armaments, whether on land 
or on sea, is the most immediately and intensely 
practical question connected with the future 
fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters 
without reserve and with the utmost explicit- 
ness, because it has seemed to me to be neces- 
sary if the world's yearning for peace was 
anywhere to find free voice and utterance. 

Perhaps I am the only person in high au- 
thority amongst all the peoples of the world 
who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing 
back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet 
I am speaking also, of course, as the responsi- 
ble head of a great Government, and I feel con- 
fident that I have said what the people of the 
United States would wish me to say. 

May I not add that I hope and believe that 
I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends 
of humanity in every nation and of every pro- 
gramme of liberty? I would fain believe that 
I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind 



War 269 

everywhere who have yet had no place or op- 
portunity to speak their real hearts out con- 
cerning the death and ruin they see to have 
come already upon the persons and the homes 
they hold most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the 
people and Government of the United States 
will join the other civilised nations of the 
world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace 
upon such terms as I have named I speak with 
the greater boldness and confidence because it 
is clear to every man who can think that there 
is in this promise no breach in either our tra- 
ditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfil- 
ment, rather, of all that we have professed or 
striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations 
should with one accord adopt the doctrine of 
President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: 
that no nation should seek to extend its polity 
over any other nation or people, but that every 
people should be left free to determine its own 
polity, its own way of development, unhin- 
dered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along 
with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth 
avoid entangling alliances which would draw 
them into competitions of power, catch them in 
a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and dis- 



270 President Wilson 

turb their own affairs with influences intruded 
from without. There is no entangling alliance 
in a concert of power. When all unite to act 
in the same sense and with the same purpose 
all act in common interest and are free to live 
their own lives under a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent 
of the governed; that freedom of the seas 
which in international conference after con- 
ference representatives of the people of the 
United States have urged with the eloquence 
of those who are the convinced disciples of lib- 
erty; and that moderation of armaments which 
makes of armies and navies a power for order 
merely, not an instrument of aggression or of 
selfish violence. 

These are American principles, American 
policies. We could stand for no others. And 
yet they are the principles and policies of for- 
ward-looking men and women everywhere, of 
every modern nation, of every enlightened 
community. They are the principles of man- 
kind and must prevail. 

WooDRow Wilson. 

"These are American principles, American 
policies." The President had fitly spoken, for 
the country applauded his message. The na- 
tion recognised his profound ideals, thus de- 



War 271 

fined and proclaimed in the face of a world 
dishonoured by massacre. And, in making 
this answer, he was unable to measure the im- 
mensity and the nearness of the sacrifices these 
ideas were about to drag from him. 

The next step followed rapidly. Perhaps 
President Wilson had imagined that his sol- 
emn declarations might be a warning to Ger- 
many, obliging her to postpone the resumption 
of submarine war. He was deceived. His 
message was delivered on January 21st. On 
the 31st, in the evening, the German ambassa- 
dor presented a note which is one of the most 
extraordinary diplomatic documents of our 
time. At first unctuous and insipid, then bru- 
tal, it is a clever concoction of old Germany 
and Prussia. The German Government had 
studied the President's message. *Tt is pleas- 
ing to state that the main lines of this impor- 
tant manifestation are in accord with the prin- 
ciples and desires to which Germany sub- 
scribes.'' And the author of the note com- 
plaisantly cited the right of every nation to 
decide its own destiny and to receive equal 
treatment, the opposition to any system of 
alliances, the liberty of the seas, and the policy 
of an open door to the commerce of all coun- 
tries. He promised ''the joyful collaboration 
of the German Government 10 every eflfort 



272 President Wilson 

which tended towards the prevention of future 
wars. Had the Government not once already 
proposed peace! And suddenly, the verbiage 
having been long enough drawn out, the note 
concluded with a revelation of its meaning: 

''Before humanity, before history, and be- 
fore its own conscience the Imperial Govern- 
ment does not wish to take the responsibility 
of renouncing any means, whatever they may 
be, of hastening the end of the war. It had 
hoped to be able to attain this end by negoti- 
ations with the President of the United States. 
Our adversaries having responded to this con- 
ciliatory step by the announcement of an ag- 
gravation of hostilities, it became necessary 
for the Imperial Government to continue the 
struggle, thus newly imposed upon it, by hav- 
ing recourse to all their arms, if they would 
serve the high ideal of humanity and hold 
themselves blameless towards their compa- 
triots. 

"Consequently, the Imperial Government de- 
cided to abolish the restrictions that it had 
hitherto imposed in the use of its means of 
naval warfare, in the hope that the American 
people and its Government would understand 
the causes and the necessity of this decision. 

"The Imperial Government hopes that the 
United States will judge the new order of 



War 273 

things from the high tribunal of impartiality, 
and that, on their side, they will also help to 
prevent further evils and the inevitable sacri- 
fice of human life." 

Three days later, on February 3rd, the Pres- 
ident summoned the two Houses and the mem- 
bers of the Supreme Court to the Capitol. At 
two o'clock he appeared before them. He re- 
called the promise he had obtained from Ger- 
many a year earlier. He recalled the declara- 
tion he had made, that if Germany broke her 
engagement the United States would have no 
choice but to sever diplomatic relations with 
the Government of the German Empire alto- 
gether. Germany had broken her word. The 
President did not ask Congress to sever rela- 
tionship with her. He had already done so. 
'T, therefore, directed the Secretary of State 
to announce to his Excellenty the German 
Ambassador that all diplomatic relations be- 
tween the United States and the German Em- 
pire are severed and that the American Ambas- 
sador in Berlin will immediately be withdrawn, 
and in accordance with this decision to hand to 
his Excellency his passports." 

The Constitution authorised the President 
to decide upon a diplomatic rupture. Thus he 
was able, without exceeding his powers, to en- 
gage the nation in a war Congress alone had 



274* President Wilson 

the right to decree. This war he had already 
predicted and shown from afar. 

**If my inveterate confidence in the discre- 
tion and foresight of my intentions is unhap- 
pily proved to be without foundation; if Amer- 
ican ships and American lives should in fact 
be sacrificed by German naval commanders in 
heedless contravention of the just and reason- 
able understandings of international law and 
the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take 
the liberty of coming again before Congress to 
ask that authority be given to me to use any 
means that may be necessary for the protection 
of our seamen and our people in the prosecu- 
tion of their peaceful legitimate errands on the 
high seas.'' 

The descent into war was certain. Presi- 
dent Wilson, as commander-in-chief of the 
forces on land and sea, armed merchant ships 
and gave each one military protection. He is- 
sued instructions that they were to fire on Ger- 
man submarines without allowing them time 
to attack. Germany declared that these armed 
guards would be treated as irregulars, and 
would be shot. From the month of March war 
existed in very fact, and there remained noth- 
ing more but to confirm it by formal vote. 

At this moment the authority and prestige 
of the President were at their highest. The 



War 275 

solemnities surrounding the renewal of his 
term of office were carried out amidst great na- 
tional enthusiasm. In accordance with custom, 
on March 7th he appeared on the steps of the 
Capitol and addressed the gigantic crowd surg- 
ing round the building. 

''Here, in your midst, I stand and have taken 
the high solemn oath to which you have been 
audience because the people of the United 
States have chosen me for this august delega- 
tion of power, and by their gracious judgment 
have named me their leader in affairs. I know 
now what the task means. I realise to the full 
the responsibility which it involves. I pray 
God that I be given wisdom and prudence to 
do my duty in the true spirit of this great peo- 
ple. I am their servant, and can succeed only 
as they sustain and guide me by their confi- 
dence and their counsel. 

*The thing I shall count upon and the thing 
without which neither counsel nor action avail 
is the unity of America — an America united 
in feeling, in purpose, in its vision of duty and 
its opportunity of service. 

''We have to beware of all men who would 
turn the tasks and necessities of the nation to 
their own private profit or use them for the 
upbuilding of private power. Beware that no 
faction or disloyal intrigue break the harmony 



276 President Wilson 

or embarrass the spirit of our people. Beware 
that our Government be kept pure and incor- 
rupt in all its parts. United alike in the con- 
ception of our duty and in the high resolve to 
perform it in face of all men, let us dedicate 
ourselves to the great task to which we must 
now set our hand. 

'Tor myself I beg your tolerance, your 
countenance, your united aid. The shadows 
that now lie dark upon our path will soon be 
dispelled. We shall walk with light all about 
us if we be but true to ourselves — to ourselves 
as we have wished to be known in the counsels 
of the world, in the thought of all those who 
love liberty, justice, and right exalted/' 

What he asked for now he was sure to ob- 
tain. All hearts were with him. On April 
2nd he called Congress together in extraordi- 
nary session, and asked for a vote for war : 

''Armed neutrality, it now appears, is im- 
practicable. Because submarines are in effect 
outlaws when used as the German submarines 
have been used against merchant shipping, it is 
impossible to defend ships against their attacks 
as the law of nations has assumed that mer- 
chantmen would defend themselves against 
privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase 
upon the open sea. It is common prudence in 
such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to 



War 277 

endeavour to destroy them before they have 
shown their own intention. They must be dealt 
with upon sight, if dealt w^ith at all. The Ger- 
man Government denies the right of neutrals 
to use arms at all within the areas of the sea 
which it has proscribed, even in the defence of 
rights which no modern publicist has ever be- 
fore questioned their right to defend. The in- 
timation is conveyed that the armed guards 
which we have placed on our merchant ships 
will be treated as beyond the pale of law and 
subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. 
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best ; 
in such circumstances and in the face of such 
pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is 
likely only to produce what it was intended to 
prevent; it is practically certain to draw us 
into the war without either the rights or the 
effectiveness of belligerents. There is one 
choice we cannot make, we are incapable of 
making: w^e will not choose the path of sub- 
mission and suffer the most sacred rights of 
our nation and our people to be ignored or vio- 
lated. The wrongs against which we now ar- 
ray ourselves are no common wTongs: they 
cut to the very roots of human life. 

"With a profound sense of the solemn and 
even tragical character of the step I am taking 
and of the grave responsibilities which it in- 



278 President Wilson 

volves, but in unhesitating obedience to what 
I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the 
Congress declare the recent course of the Im- 
perial German Government to be in fact noth- 
ing less than war against the government and 
people of the United States; that it formally 
accept the status of belligerent which has thus 
been thrust upon it ; and that it take immediate 
steps not only to put the country in a more thor- 
ough state of defence but also to exert all its 
power and employ all its resources to bring the 
Government of the German Empire to terms 
and end the war/' 

In addition the President asked for an allo- 
cation of credit on behalf of the Powers al- 
ready in conflict with Germany, the placing of 
the fleet on a war footing, the economic mobil- 
isation of national resources and labour, and 
an immediate increase of the army. He asked 
for 500,000 recruits upon the principle of uni- 
versal obligatory service. But what he did not 
ask for, what he did not say in actual words, 
he allowed to be understood. In the continua- 
tion of his speech he said. "We must help the 
Powers warring against Germany/' (He al- 
ways avoided calling them the Allied Powers 
— but perhaps the word is not important.) 
Then he added, and in reproducing the phrase 



War 279 

the press underlined it, 'These Powers are in 
the field. We must help them in every man- 
ner that can be effective." 

The deed was done. We need not tell the 
story of the resistance, the parliamentary 
manoeuvres always being resumed and always 
being disappointed. We need not attempt to 
analyse the war organisation which added to 
the already immense powers of the President, 
associating him with the technical councils 
w^hich already held considerable authority. 
The facts are not yet at the disposition of the 
historian. A moment must be given to that 
afternoon of June 14th when the President 
celebrated ''Flag Day'' in the presence of the 
people. A policeman had to hold an umbrella 
over his head as he spoke, for it was raining. 
Yet his speech was so ardent that the crowd 
was deeply impressed. He wished them to 
know exactly where they were going, warned 
them that they were engaged in the most for- 
midable of fights. 

^'My Fellow Citizens: 

"We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this 
flag which we honour and under which we 
serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, 
our thought and purpose as a nation. It has 



280 President Wilson 

no other character than that which we give it 
from generation to generation. The choices 
are ours. It floats in majestic silence above 
the hosts that execute those choices, whether 
in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it 
speaks to us — speaks to us of the past, of the 
men and women who went before us and of the 
records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the 
day of its birth ; and from its birth until now 
it has witnessed a great history, has floated on 
high the symbol of great events, of a great 
plan of life worked out by a great people. We 
are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where 
it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are 
about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, 
it may be millions, of our men, the young, the 
strong, the capable men of the nation, to go 
forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far 
away — for what? For some unaccustomed 
thing? For something for which it has never 
sought the fire before? American armies 
were never before sent across the seas. Why 
are they sent now? For some purpose, for 
which this great flag has never been carried 
before, or for some old, familiar, heroic pur- 
pose for which it has seen men, its own men, 
die on every battlefield upon which Americans 
have borne arms since the Revolution? . . ." 



War 281 

Again the President defined the cause the 
United States were defending. He finished 
with a promise and a threat. 

'Tor us there is but one choice. We have 
made it. Woe be to the man or group of men 
that seeks to stand in our way in this day of 
high resolution when every principle we hold 
dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for 
the salvation of the nations. We are ready to 
plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall 
wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make 
good with our lives and fortunes the great faith 
to which we were born, and a new glory shall 
shine in the face of our people.'' 

Woe be to the man who seeks to stand in our 
way! Many liberals, until then eager in their 
support of the President, disliked this threat, 
and did not hide their censure. The President 
left them to their talk. He knew better than 
these enthusiastic but weak critics the task he 
had undertaken. Exercised by power and devel- 
oped by responsibility his spirit penetrated a 
future still shrouded in shadow. He was able 
to imagine the unprecedented sacrifices he was 
about to exact, the opposition, the crises, the 
anarchist anger, he would be compelled to 
break. The conquering Lincoln fell under the 



282 President Wilson 

bullet of a fanatic, as the President well knew. 
He was better qualified than any of the lib- 
erals to measure the formidable problem of al- 
lowing a young, fresh, and passionate nation 
to enter the sanguinary arena. With full 
knowledge he assumed the task. But, to carry 
it through, he had to call for the exercise of 
every one of his rights. 

He obtained them. In September, Congress 
adjourned, after having long resisted and pro- 
longed its debates. President Wilson now 
stood alone. He was head of the armies on 
land and on sea, dictator of production and 
consumption, absolute master over every bat- 
tle and of all labour. His powers of action 
were of the widest and the law itself sanctioned 
his decrees. "It has taken four months to 
clear the decks,'' wrote the North American 
Review in September, 19 17. **They are cleared 
now. Despite the haggling and hobbling of a 
Congress unwilling to invoke cloture to make 
effective the will of a majority, despite the 
hundred days of futile debate upon a single bill 
imposed by a few wilful men under sinister 
leadership of extraordinary skill, the true 
theory of undivided, masterful direction in war 
has finally prevailed, and the President holds 
in the hollow of his hands the full power which 



War 283 

should have been his from the beginning, — a 
power infinitely greater than that of any other 
living ruler and unsurpassed by that of Alex- 
ander or of Napoleon." 

In this manner the entire nation viewed the 
leader it had elected as its head. "Now he is 
free," ran the word in clubs, streets, news- 
papers, homes, ''the war will be won." 



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